Government accused over plastic bag waste

Nearly 1m branded plastic bags were handed out by government departments last year despite Gordon Brown's call for businesses and supermarkets to phase out their use. Six departments and the publicly funded Electoral Commission together bought 979,106 plastic bags for promotions and marketing, according to Guardian calculations.

In November Brown used his first speech on the environment as prime minister to call for their elimination, describing the bags as "the most visible symbol of environmental health". The issue gathered momentum this week when the Daily Mail launched a "banish the bag" campaign. Yesterday Marks & Spencer announced it is to charge customers 5p for plastic bags, the only major supermarket chain to do so.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs estimates that 13bn free plastic bags are given out by retailers to UK shoppers every year. Each bag takes up to 1,000 years to decay. Last night the shadow secretary for communities and local government, Eric Pickles, said: "It is the height of hypocrisy for government ministers to waste taxpayers' money on such vanity purchases. While Gordon Brown lectures the public on the environment his own ministers are fuelling Britain's throwaway culture."

The figures emerged in answers to a series of parliamentary questions by the Tories. Some departments supplied details for the past 24 months and the annual figure was worked out by halving that amount. In total the government revealed it bought 1,284,040 plastic bags last year. Mike Webster, of pressure group Waste Watch, said: "Laid end to end [the bags] would reach 400 kilometres - just about enough to reach from London to Paris."

The largest commission was by the Department for Work and Pensions, which ordered more than 600,000 branded plastic bags in the last year. DWP minister Anne McGuire told parliament the "vast majority" of these were for campaigns by the Health and Safety Executive.

Departments giving figures for the last two years included Communities and Local Government, which spent £19,950 on 300,000 bags for its "fire kills" campaign, the Home Office, which spent £15,455 on 132,000 bags, and the Foreign Office, which bought 11,000 bags. Neither of the latter two specified why.

The government pledged to phase out free single-use carrier bags in its Waste Strategy for England 2007, launched in May last year. MPs are expected to vote on the issue in April or May, when a private bill sponsored by the London Councils thinktank is debated in parliament. A Defra spokesman said: "There is nothing wrong with a carrier bag; it is the single use of a carrier bag that is the problem."

(By Allegra Stratton, The Guardian, 29/02/2008)