The Plastic Bag Charge & Food Waste for Charity - October & November 2015 Recycled News

October and November have been pretty quiet on the recycling news front, although still some interesting stories nonetheless. Plastic Bag Charge Right back at the beginning of October – the 5p plastic bag charge came into play! The scheme has been introduced to reduce single-use carrier bags and the litter associated with them, by encouraging people to re-use their bags. In 2014, over 7.6 billion single-use plastic bags were given to customers by major supermarkets in England. That’s roughly 140 bags per person and the equivalent of 61,000 tonnes in total. The scheme has already been in place across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Wales have already seen reductions up to 79% in the first 3 years. According to the Leeds-based Asda, since England launched the scheme, plastic bag usage is already down by 90%. Could the plastic carrier bag be on its way to extinction?! Morrisons Have Vowed to Donate Waste Food to Charity Morrisons will become the UK’s first supermarket to donate all surplus food to charity, instead of disposing of it. This action comes after 180,000 people signed a petition asking just for this! An astonishing amount of food is wasted in the UK each year (15 million tonnes -  £5 billion worth) and Morrisons are taking action! These actions follow a successful trial in Yorkshire and the North East involving 112 stores. They found that each store can donate 4 trolley loads of unsold food per week. Although Morrisons cannot legally donate food past its ‘use-by’ date but they can offer food that is safe to be eaten and past its ‘best-before’ date. Recycle for London Scheme The Recycle for London scheme is being launched by Resource London, a partnership between the London Waste, Recycling Board (LWARB) and WRAP. It takes note that if every Londoner recycled one extra plastic bottle a week for a year, enough energy would be saved to power Wembley Stadium for two years! One major aim of this campaign is to encourage the people of London to recycle ‘just one thing’ each week. The campaign has been supported by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson who has set targets of recycling 50% of waste by 2020. If successful, this campaign will contribute highly to English recycling rates which are currently sat at 42%.