[user104658]

Originally Posted by Ammi

...but to some whose income is extremely budgeted to almost the last penny...30/40p is a lot of extra money each week and to pay that week after week for carrier bags...it would make so much more sense to buy their re-usable bags one week at a time even and then they won't have anything extra to pay for a while so it just makes sense to do it and I think people will...you just have far too much spare change TS...

It's more about the way it scales, though. If you're not spending much then it's going to cost you 5p... If it's costing more than say 30p (six bags) then you must have spent at LEAST £30, which then makes the 30p negligible.

Anyway, it's been in practice up here for ages, and genuinely, I'd day less than 10% of people actually carry bags around with them. Most people just pay the extra. Although I guess 10% is better than nothing (if you care about the ducks and stuff).

I would be interested to know EXACTLY where that money goes, though. As far as I know the supermarkets don't get to keep it, but they ARE allowed to make profits on their "bags for life" (which, by the way, are crap and fall apart after a couple of uses).