Plastic bags use less resources to produce than paper bags – if they can be responsibly disposed of in land fill they are minimising global warming by performing a carbon sequestration function. Plastic bags are a serious environmental problem when they enter the litter stream.

When they enter the litter stream on land a plastic bag adds to visual pollution – depending on various factors a thin plastic bag that is outside and exposed to UV sunlight should have disintegrated within a year. In rivers and the ocean plastic bags can cause serious problems to marine life that can ingest them unintentionally or mistake then for jelly fish. We believe that action should be taken to address this issue.

What we are doing

At Churchill and Coombes we believe that it is light weight singlet bags that present the biggest litter problem. When people buy take-away food and get a light weight singlet bag there is a strong chance that it will blow away when they are eating lunch. We believe that light weight shopping bags should be required to be biodegradable. We do not sell small light weight singlet bags that are not biodegradable.

Normal singlet bags as used in supermarkets are highly unlikely to enter the litter stream. They are generally reused as bin liners which is preferable to having loose garbage in bins which can blow around if it is spilt or once it gets to a land-fill.