WITCHES KNICKERS

How are you getting on with the carrier bag levy that was introduced way back in March 2002? If you are anything like me you have lapsed into complacency and hardly ever remember to take your “Bag for Life” bag with you to the shops. I usually find myself at the checkout before I remember that I have left it on the kitchen table. We are not alone either. A report out last week showed that the reduction of 95% of bags being bought at the beginning of the charge is slowly creeping back up. We spent €3.2 million on bags in the first three months of last year. During the first three months this year the amount is up by at least another million euro on that figure. So far the government has raised €42 million from the levy, which works out at about 285 million bags being sold. The number is probably far greater than this though because the Department of the Environment is finding it very difficult to keep a tight control on the revenue raised from retailers. A lot of retailers who are linked to recycling schemes such as Repak get paid for their cardboard, because of this they are reluctant to give out boxes because they loose revenue. This hasn’t helped the situation. Ireland is nowhere near the plastic bag capital of the world though, Singapore for example use an estimated 40 billion plastic bags each year. That works out to 27 bags per person per day! Plastic bags have earned the nickname” Witches Knickers” here at home because they are often seen waving around in trees marring the view on the countryside. The bags now only make up 1% of the rubbish thrown into the countryside. They follow behind cigarette packets, plastic bottles, sweet wrappers, beer bottles and cans, cans of pop and fast food packaging