Session 2020

Examen : BTS Négociation et Digitalisation de la Relation Client Page 1/2

Épreuve orale de langue vivante étrangère : ANGLAIS (LV1)

Will 30p plastic bags end our habit for good

or is it time for more extreme measures?

Morrisons is testing a higher charge for single-use bags, but experts says all non-
essential plastic must be phased out.
It is a significant price rise, but it could pay off. Morrisons is increasing the price of its
plastic bags to 30p1, having already upped them to 20p earlier this year. The supermarket
5 is testing the charge in some of its Welsh stores, with money being “reinvested in plastic
reduction programmes”, says a spokeswoman.
The 5p charge for single-use plastic bags that was introduced in Wales in 2011, then
Northern Ireland and Scotland before England finally caught up in 2015, has been
considered a success. The seven main supermarkets in England gave out 6bn fewer bags
10 between in the first six months of the charge than in the corresponding period a year
before. However, last year supermarkets sold 1.18bn of the thicker2 “bags for life”,
prompting3 fears people were using these as single-use bags instead. The Environmental
Investigation Agency has said bags for life should cost £1, rather than the 10p many
supermarkets still charge.
15 But can raising prices have a positive environmental effect? Charges such as Morrison’s
30p bags “will hopefully encourage more people to save money and help the environment
by taking their own bags with them”, says Tony Bosworth, a campaigner at Friends of the
Earth. However, adds Lorraine Whitmarsh, a professor of environmental psychology at
Cardiff University, there isn’t enough evidence4 to say that ramping up the price will create
20 drastic change. It may even risk a backlash, she says. “I think the next step would be to
think about charges for other packaging, for instance coffee cups and excess food
packaging.”
However, Whitmarsh has found that encouraging people to make more environmentally
friendly choices through economic measures may not have a wider impact. “The more you
25 rely on economic measures, the more it reinforces people’s economic motivations. They’re
not doing it necessarily for environmental reasons and therefore you don’t get people to
think about the environment more generally. It’s effective to change that particular
behaviour, but it doesn’t change any other behaviours at all.”
Besides, says Bosworth, carrier bags “are just the tip of a vast plastic iceberg.
30 Supermarkets must go much further to reduce unnecessary plastic. We also need the
government to take deeper action, too – including backing a proposed new law to phase
out the use of all but the most essential plastic.” Thirty pence already seems a small price
to pay.

Emine Sanner, theguardian.com, 21st August 2019 (adapted)

1 30p = approximately €0.25

2 thick: épais
3 to prompt = to generate
4 evidence = proof