Ministers urged to learn from success of single-use bag fee, amid criticism that other measures have been delayed

Environmental campaigners have called on the government to learn from its own successes after official figures showed the use of single-use supermarket plastic bags had fallen 98% since retailers in England began charging for them in 2015.

Annual distribution of plastic carrier bags by seven leading grocery chains plummeted from 7.6bn in 2014 to 133m last year, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said on Monday.

  • Polar@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I see your from feddit.nl, which makes your comment make sense, but you really need to realize that in many places in the world, the way the town’s and cities were built, it’s just impossible to implement public transit, and biking isn’t really an alternative.

    Or places where public transit is a thing, it is really inconvenient.

    My girlfriend can drive to work in 30 minutes. Taking the bus takes her over an hour. So instead of a 1 hour drive each day, she’s on the bus for 2.5 hours + waiting + the inconvenience of the buses not being on schedule + the buses shutting down at midnight

    It’s great if you can commit an extra 1.5 hours every day just to sit on a bus, but she can’t. Not to mention that’s just going to work. If she needed to stop by for groceries, pet food, doctors appointments, etc, she’s adding an insane amount of time in between by having to switch buses.

    I know cars are bad, but going to work + running errands legit wastes a good 3+ hours vs taking a car. That’s a massive chunk of wasted time. She has shit she needs to do at home, she can’t spend a quarter of her day sitting on public transit.

    • treefingers@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Imagine if the public transport system wasn’t rubbish and your girlfriend could travel in the same 30 minutes?

      Public transport isn’t the problem, it’s the solution

      • Polar@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        Okay. I’ll tell my city to just tear down half of it so they can build a better system.

        Like I said, not all towns and cities were designed for it. It’s not something you can just plop in centuries down the road. The world doesn’t work that way.

        Any new development should have public transit in mind. Old development can’t really be retrofitted. It’s like you missed my entire comment.

        • Vii@feddit.deEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          In many places the cities were retrofitted for car centric infrastructure already, why couldnt it happen again?