A surprisingly non-woke fact check from the Channel 4 fact checkers has found that the Government’s claim that plastic bag sales have fallen 90% since they introduced the 5p bag charge is, in fact, rubbish. There was one glaring omission from the figures – they don’t include ‘bags for life’…

Most supermarkets have simply replaced ‘single-use’ plastic bags with so-called ‘bags for life’, forcing long-suffering shoppers trying to buy just a few items to either perform a juggling act trying to get their meal deals back to the office or take a full-size thicker plastic ‘bag for life’ instead that is only a quarter full. Many refuse to provide figures of ‘bag for life’ sales to avoid negative publicity but for the three that did, sales were down less than 2% on the previous year. Almost one billion bags for life were sold in just one year in 2017/2018, the average household uses 44 a year…

As the fact checkers point out, bags for life are much thicker and made of higher-grade plastic, using far more plastic than the old ‘single-use’ bags – which many consumers happily used multiple times anyway. Iceland’s managing director last year admitted that they were now using more plastic overall since switching to bags for life. The fact checkers conclude:

“There is no evidence of a dramatic decrease in the sale of bags for life. And the limited evidence available suggests the introduction of bags for life might have actually increased the overall amount of plastic being used.”

Yet another example of poorly conceived woke policy-making that ends up achieving exactly the opposite effect…