An idea to charge for plastic bags on weekends [News]

An idea to charge for plastic bags on weekends By Neo Chai Chin, TODAY, 1 Oct 2013. Wading again into what it calls a “very polarising environmental issue” here, the Singapore Environment Council (SEC) yesterday floated the idea of charging for supermarket plastic bags on weekends after a six-month outreach and education effort next year. Backed by survey findings on how households obtain and reuse plastic bags, the proposal was one of 10 made by the SEC, that also included bins with second-hand reusable bags placed near cashier counters for shoppers who have forgotten to take their own bags to the supermarket. One in three consumers here waste some or all the plastic bags they take for free at supermarkets, the SEC found from questions posed to 2,500 households that were tagged to a Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources survey last year. This was derived from the percentage of respondents who threw bags away after taking them home (6.3 per cent) and those who store more than 20 plastic bags at home at a time. Click here to read the full article. Source: TODAY