WEST Devon Borough Council is urging the Government to address the issue of excess packaging and plastics in particular. A motion was put to the council by the Liberal Democrat group, in light of the Government?s recycling targets imposed on councils. The authority was asked to write to the appropriate Government department and Cllr David Sparks, chair of the environmental board of the Local Government Association, urged them to do whatever they could seriously to address the issue of reducing excess packaging at source and in supermarkets, with particular regard to plastics. Group member Cllr Alison Clish Green told the council that the ?plastax? already in place in Ireland, where 9p per plastic bag is charged, had been a resounding success, resulting in a 95% drop in the use of plastic bags and a saving of £7-million. Scotland was about to introduce similar legislation, imposing a 10p levy on plastic carrier bags. Cllr Clish Green said: ?One of the main challenges is to persuade people to stop accepting bags when they don?t need one. We should all try to use hessian, cloth or other reusable bags and we must continue to be proactive about this locally, persuading retailers and the public to be more environmentally active.? The council supported a similar motion in February 2004 when independent councillor Margaret Garton proposed that the authority support the decision by Aberdeen City Council to request the government to introduce a levy on the sale of plastic bags by supermarkets. In the UK we use ten billion plastic bags each year which equates to 134 per person per year. At least 40 countries around the world have already banned, or are taking action to restrict, the use of disposable plastic bags.
