“People like to keep quiet”: Customers use plastic bags billions of times


“Will be kept secret”
Customers use plastic bags billions of times

While plastic shopping bags will be banned from supermarkets for good from next year, the much thinner bags for fruit and vegetables will continue to be massively consumed. Not exactly sustainable, emphasizes the opposition in the Bundestag and attacks Environment Minister Schulze sharply.

In Germany billions of the very thin Easter bags and vegetable bags excluded from the plastic bag ban are consumed. As the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” reported, citing a government response to an FDP request, supermarket customers grabbed almost 3.65 billion of the so-called shirt bags in 2019.

“This corresponds to a per capita consumption of around 44 very light plastic carrier bags or bags per year,” writes the ministry, citing a survey by the Society for Packaging Market Research.

The small carrier bags with a wall thickness of less than 15 micrometers will still be found in the fruit and vegetable departments and the meat counters of many supermarkets. They are given free of charge or in exchange for cents. Classic plastic shopping bags, on the other hand, will be banned from 2022. Many shops are already doing without it and are relying on alternatives made of paper or fabric. Stable reusable bags are exempt from the ban.

Judith Skudelny, environmental policy spokeswoman for the FDP parliamentary group, accused Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze of symbolic politics. The massive consumption of shirt bags “is part of the plastic truth that the minister likes to keep quiet,” said the FDP politician. Smarter solutions are needed. Skudelny referred to biodegradable bags that could be reused as trash bags for organic waste after shopping.

.