The levy on new carrier bags thinner than 70 microns for retailers in England came into force on 5 October and follows the introduction of similar laws in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Residents of Wales have reduced plastic bag use by 71% since a 5p fee was introduced in 2011. Scotland and Northern Ireland introduced charges in 2014 and 2013 respectively and have seen a drop of 18%, for part of the year, and 42.6% annual reduction in 2014 respectively.
However, only England singles out plastic bags, leaving paper and bags made from plant-based starch charge-free, and allows small companies to opt out.
Bags used to carry unwrapped food, such as fish or raw meat, prescription medicines, blades, flowers, seeds and bulbs are also exempt from the levy across the UK. As are bags used to give out information, such as at trade shows, all of which is rather complicated for such a simple idea.
In fact, the rules are so confusing that several bag manufacturers have put guides on their websites.
Newcastle business The Printed Bag Shop, whose clients include Boots, Vivienne Westwood and Virgin Money, has had a downloadable guide on its website for several months, after many customers were “baffled” by the rules, according to Chris Smith, managing director of the £700,000-turnover firm.
“We’ve seen this coming for a while now and we’ve done what we can to build our way around it so it doesn’t affect us like other companies. 99% of our customers don’t have 250 employees and the majority of our orders are for paper bags. We also do 50% or more of our business at exhibitions and events, and there’s no bag tax there.
“But before the tax came in the media weren’t really telling people the full details.”
Brian Yardy, managing director of £6.5m-turnover CFN Packaging Group, which sells both plastic and paper bags flexo printed at its Skegness, Lincolnshire factory, says “the propaganda” leading up to the change in England was having more effect on bag printers than the eventual change in law.
“People have been unsure about what’s going to happen and they’re still unsure. A few months ago people didn’t know what to do, they’ve probably gone to paper because they didn’t know what the right thing to do was,” he says.
“It [the new law] is more focused on the supermarkets and I think that is the right market, it’s the bags that are coming from China and India that are affected, not those from UK manufacturers. If something was going to happen it would’ve happened in the last six months.”
Some UK manufacturers welcome the charge. Lucy Larkman, commercial director at Burgass Carrier Bags, which prints all its paper and polythene bags in Nottingham and has a turnover of £2.5m, says: “We are looking forward to seeing the impact of the carrier bag tax and think this will only have a positive knock-on for our business. We expect to see a rise in sales of our durable ‘bags for life’ and kraft paper bags.
“With such a renewed interest in carrier bags, we also hope that people will consider the provenance of their bags and buy directly from British manufacturers.”
Managing director of Paper Bag Company, Jon Marling, says perception could end up having more effect than the legislation itself.
“Even though it doesn’t cover all plastic bags or all companies, because there’s a lot in the media about it, people are not likely to want to take one from shops.”
The £3m-turnover company prints paper, cotton and jute bags for retailers and for promotional purposes, such as to give out at trade shows, using flexo, litho and screen printing. It takes direct orders, as well as those from other printers and print managers. Around 40% of its bags are printed in its 232m2 Westbury, Wiltshire facility, where 15 people work, and a sub-contracted factory in Nottingham. The rest are printed in Europe and Asia.
Marling adds: “Cotton and jute bags are becoming more popular and you see them a lot at trade shows and exhibitions.”
One of Marling’s high-street retail clients, Schuh, has realised the promotional value of reusable cloth bags. It sells a canvas tote bag for £2 with images of Big Ben, the London Eye, a London taxi and ‘Schuh London’ printed on the front, attracting positive reviews on the website.
Smith also says his company has seen a surge in interest in cloth bags: “Orders for cloth bags doubled last month. The smaller shops aren’t having to change but they’ve wanted cloth bags with their logo on. They wanted to give them out for a few weeks to get the advertising. A couple of clients have said they’ll offer customers 5p off their shop every time they bring the bag back and buy something new. This week enquiries have more than doubled.”
Expansion opportunities in this space are positive, say the companies surveyed by PrintWeek. Plastic ‘vest’ bags, such as those previously given out at supermarkets, are usually bought from Asia at a cost of a fraction of a penny, one reason why UK manufacturers are not so ruffled by this change of law.
Suppliers have also pointed to a growth in interest in switching to paper but the high cost often puts customers off, unless they want to make a luxury impression.
“Our bestseller is our luxury laminated paper bag. We do an awful lot for clients such as [cosmetics brands] Clinique and Smashbox,” says Smith, whose products are printed in the UK and Europe. “Clinique likes full-colour, QVC likes spot UV, other names think less is more; they might go for a natural effect or like recycled paper.”
Shops in the Republic of Ireland have switched to paper bags almost completely since its law came into force in 2002. Retailers must now charge the equivalent of 16p per plastic bag there and the Irish government has said the charge has reduced use of single-use plastic bags by 95%.
“There’s been a slow move to paper over the last few years but it’s early days,” adds another UK bag manufacturer, who wants to remain anonymous. “It’s not set in stone that polythene is worse than paper or cloth. Even in Scandinavia where they’ve had charges for years they still need bags and use bags.”
According to data gathered by sustainability charity Wrap and voluntarily supplied by seven major UK supermarkets, customers used 8.5 billion thin-gauge (single-use) bags in 2014. This was an increase of 2.3% on 2013 (8.3 billion) but a decrease of 30% compared with 2006 (12.2 billion), when reporting began.
