The news that British retailer Marks & Spencer is to start charging shoppers 5p for plastic bags in its food departments has been widely and positively reported – see BBC report.  The aim is to reduce M&S’s share of the 13 billion plastic bags given away every year in Britain. The money raised will go to the environmental charity Groundwork.

The announcement came as the Daily Mail launched a campaign against carrier bags. The Mail’s move went some way to correct the paper’s reputation as a reactionary influence in British life.

I’m all in favour of action to persuade us to kick the plastic bag habit. We now use canvas bags for our weekly Tesco shop. Tesco’s green Clubcard points are a strangely compelling incentive, out of all proportion to the minuscule financial reward. I’m sure M&S’s move will have a similar effect. A cattle prod to prompt us to do what we know must be right: to reuse carrier bags rather than simply throwing them in the bin. Left to our own devices we’ll simply keep taking bags without thinking.

Critics will say plastic bags are a tiny part of the environmental challenge. Yet why on earth should we waste billions of plastic bags? The current trend to reuse bags is simply going back to a more careful era. I remember many shops charging for bags 20 years ago. And back in the Sixties Mum had her own personal shopping trolley on two wheels – no carrier needed!

Lyn in the Co-op in Chalfont St Giles was telling everyone she served today that the Government was forcing the shops to charge customers for carrier bags. Not yet, they aren’t. (Though they plan to.) She said that such charges will hit old people. I find that hard to believe – pensioners are more likely than youngsters to reuse carrier bags, having been brought up in more frugal times.