Boots UK Chain to Save 40M Plastic Bags a Year with Bag Ban

The UK health and beauty chain Boots says it will ban plastic bags from its stores by 2020, a move that will save 40 million plastic bags a year, according to the retailer. Plastic will be replaced with brown paper bags, and customers will be charged for their use. Profits of the paper bags – since they do not fall under the plastic bag tax – will be donated to BBC Children in Need, reports The Guardian.

Fifty-three Boots stores are ousting plastic bags effective immediately; the move will be rolled out to the retailer’s nearly 2,500 stores by the beginning of 2020.

While Greenpeace warns that retailers need to be careful that by swapping plastic for paper they don’t “end up shifting the problem from our oceans to our forests,” Boots says the new paper bags have been carefully tested to make sure that, over their entire lifecycle, they are better for the environment.

England levied a tax on plastic bags in shops in 2015, while other European countries had begun charging taxes for plastic bag use as early as 2003. The tax has been said to be effective from keeping plastic bags from the oceans. A 2018 study found an estimated 30% drop in plastic bags on the seabed in seas around Britain that can be linked to the timeframe that charges were introduced in European countries, The Guardian reported.

Boots says the paper bags are a sturdy and practical option at a time when customers are expecting retailers to move away from their reliance on plastic.

Since England’s government introduced a plastic bag charge in 2015, plastic bag sales at the country’s seven largest grocery retailers have dropped 86%, latest figures show.

Cincinnati-based Kroger Co. plans to phase out single-use plastic bags across all of its stores by 2025, beginning with Seattle-based QFC stores, which will transition away from single-use plastic bags in 2019. Kroger says it will eventually move to reusable totes, which the company sells, though customers will have the option to use paper bags for now.

The grocery chain will solicit customer feedback and work with NGOs and community partners to “ensure a responsible transition,” the company says.

According to Kroger, less than 5% of plastic bags are recycled, and single-use plastic bags are the fifth-most common single-use plastic found in the environment by magnitude.