The plastic bag levy will damage the environment unless the alternatives have impeccable environmental attributes – and most of them don’t (New plastic bag tax does not go far enough, say campaigners, 5 October).

The exemptions alone will undermine most of the putative savings. Not only that, but, if we had a better waste-disposal system using efficient combined heat and power incinerators, we could capture the energy from the “borrowed oil” which plastic bags represent. Only 5% of crude oil is used to make all of the plastics we use, and plastic bags are only about 5% of that. A single car trip to the supermarket each week wastes more energy and creates more pollution than a dozen plastic bags.

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Source: Guardian Environment