Lack of publicity over England's shops charging 5p a bag

Azari

It's a pity that they didn't do something to get people on board with the idea by, for example, setting up a central fund that the retailers paid the monies to, and allowing people to specify which charities they wanted the money to go to.

Bogof_Babe

Hopefully the annual guilt-fest that TK Maxx impose on their customers... "Would you like to add £1 to your bill for Comic Relief?" can now be responded to with "no thanks, but I'll buy a carrier bag and you can give them the money from that".

Kite2010

Pay 5p for a bag, retailer will suddenly find itself doing some creative accounting to off-set various costs of running the scheme against the revenues, and oh dear there is nothing left of the revenue to be donated to "good causes" (or some small token amount).

Best example was in a Burger King in Wales having a "summary" sheet on the wall saying how much was raised by charging for paper bags, raised something like £56K, 'costs' of running the scheme £55K, leaving £250 being split between 4 different charities.

The majority of the 'costs' the business would have had to pay regardless, they are just increasing their profits (and hence giving their shareholders a better deal).

skintpaul

Is this 5p a set fee, or ON TOP of what some shops charge for bags, anyway..?

Aldi are only ones that I know of, at present, not to give bags free.. regardless of home much you spend!

- though they don't seem to mind you taking the empty packing boxes..

JReacher1

skintpaul wrote: »

Is this 5p a set fee, or ON TOP of what some shops charge for bags, anyway..?

Aldi are only ones that I know of, at present, not to give bags free.. regardless of home much you spend!

- though they don't seem to mind you taking the empty packing boxes..

It's a mandatory tax per bag but the money doesn't go to the government instead the shop is meant to give the profit to charity.

I would suspect aldi will charge 5p per bag but will only give the difference between the previous cost and the new cost to charity.

skintpaul

So, if we use our own bags, do shops pay US? Seems only fair.. :-)

barbiedoll

skintpaul wrote: »

So, if we use our own bags, do shops pay US? Seems only fair.. :-)

They should pay us for all of the free advertising we give them!

That's why I use my Sainsbury's bag in Morrisons, my Lidl bag in Sainsburys and my Waitrose bag in Tesco.

LadyDee

I'd like to think we could look forward to prices coming down then as the bags have never been "free", but built-in to the cost of the goods.

Herbalus

LadyDee wrote: »

I'd like to think we could look forward to prices coming down then as the bags have never been "free", but built-in to the cost of the goods.

Congratulations. Your £65.48 shop has now become £65.45.

Though I admire your optimism

Nilrem

I saw my first sign in a shop about the impending charge.

It was about an A5 or A6 notice on a self service till in Morrisons.

The sign next to it stating the scales were out of action on that particular till was about 4 times the size.