The 5p Law
The 5p law was bought into place on the 5th October 2015. (DEFRA, 2015.)
The law was set into place to discourage the consumers from using plastic
bags, and alternatively decrease the waste levels behind plastic bag, but also
encourage consumers to invest in bags for life.
In response to the new legislation, a mixture of responses have arisen in
terms of consumer attitudes. Entrepreneur James Burrows, was recycling
plastics by selling 100 ‘lightly- used’ plastic bags on Amazon for just £2, consequently charging 2.5p per bag (Andy Richardson, 2015). Overall showing
a very wise way of using a government law to Burrow’s advantages to successfully sell and gain a profit from reusable plastic bags. Issues arose after
the law enforcement for Tesco, involving the negative behaviour displayed by
Tesco customers. This involved shopping baskets being stolen, resulting in
Tesco taking action and attaching security tags to every basket. Also discovering that customers of the supermarket Tesco had been leaving the store
and taking the trolleys as an alternative of having to pay 5p for a bag (The
ITV News, 2015.)
The online supermarket Ocado offered consumers 5p back for every shopping bag they gave the delivery driver back (Julia Rampen, 2015.) A competitive advantage for this retailer, leaving the likes of Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s
and Waitrose charging a compulsory charge of 40p for bags on every delivery. On a global scale it has been seen that Germany have been very forward
in their marketing and motivation skills to encourage consumers to recycle
their plastic bottles. Each plastic bottle withholding the correct symbol
printed on the item, is purchased as a higher cost (Megan Cane, 2013.) By
recycling the plastic bottles back to specific shops it enables the consumer
to gain money back for recycling. A brilliant incentive to increase the level of
bottles being reused. As a negative to this law enforcement, the dismissal of
the legislation has occurred, for example, River Island quickly altered from
plastic bags to paper bags. This shows a lack of determination and global empowerment to reduce and reuse plastic bags, but alternatively but the issue
onto another material.
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