Imported plastic products

The recent political debate over our use of plastic supermarket bags comes at the end of a period where progress has meant the move

from paper to plastic...Thirty years ago paper still ruled. In the UK, the switch to plastic has been a result of growing competition in the supermarket sector.

Plastic has been the material of choice in recent days and it is more hygienic, if for example something spilt as you carried your shopping home.

It is also stronger and fairs better in the damp British climate.

Crucially, however, plastic bags have become cheaper than paper. The so called "T-shirt" bags that are freely available at supermarkets are made of lightweight, high-density polythene.

They cost and weigh a fraction of the older and thicker, stretchy polythene bag that shops used to charge for.

Just because cows in India are mistakenly eating bags, has the bottom finally fallen out of the plastic bag market?

Not surprisingly, those with a stake in the industry deny reports of its demise. The fault is with human behaviour, not the bags themselves.

Some people, for example recycle them as bin bags. If you make people pay for supermarket bags, they will have to go out and buy separate bin bags.

Plastic requires a great deal less energy in manufacturing than paper and because the vast majority of our plastic bags are imported from Asia, a switch back to heavier paper bags, means it would take more energy to bring them over.

So for the meantime at least, British shoppers will continue to use plastic fantastic.

Recycled plastics

There's a definite market for recycled plastic in the UK. We import lots of our plastic for recycling from as far away as Belgium! It would make much more environmental and economic sense if we could get it from, say, Birmingham.

At the moment it is burnt or buried rather than recycled. Burning plastic leads to pollution and wastes energy and resources. Recycling generates more jobs than incineration.

Recycling plastic makes environmental sense - one recycled bottle can save enough energy to keep a 60W light bulb lit for 6 hours and provides opportunities for sustainable economic development.

In the UK we spend around £45 million a year collecting and disposing of plastic bottles to landfill. By better allocation of this existing funding we could develop a much higher level of efficient plastics recycling throughout the UK.