The supermarket stealth tax on not having your shit together has just increased by more than a third. Tesco this week followed Sainsbury’s lead earlier this month in increasing the charge for its Bag for Life from 30p to 40p.

The response from consumers has been predictably fevered – social media doing what it is designed to do and pitting opposing tribes against each other over the topic. On one side, shoppers raged at the “greedy bastards” at big supermarket HQ. On the other, people argued along the lines of ‘if you don’t like it, shut up and remember a reusable one next time’.

After the story was broken by The Grocer on Tuesday, Newsquest local titles ran with the curious headline: ‘Tesco shoppers disgraced as cost of Bags for Life increases’. Either an editing oversight, or play on the newly amplified shame of forgetting to bring bags with you.

Both sides of the shouting match have a point, and have it completely wrong at the same time.

Supermarkets by law must charge a minimum of 10p for a Bag for Life (and also replace them free of charge if returned when worn out). They face a fine for not charging. The government’s intention with the policy was that a charge would incentivise reusing bags. So where’s the other 30p going?

Likely not into executives’ pockets. “Once you’ve deducted reasonable costs, it’s expected that you’ll donate all proceeds to good causes, particularly environmental causes,” government guidelines say.

Although it certainly smells like a cynical cash grab on forgetful consumers, if any profiteering was happening on the bag front, it would be a genuine scandal. Bags for Life had been a curious exception to inflation everywhere else in grocery – with Sainsbury’s pointing out its reusable had remained at 30p for three years.

“We recently updated it to balance rising costs and our continued donations to good causes, including initiatives tackling food poverty, which are supported by all profits from the sales,” it said.

There’s probably been more than enough time by now for us all to have formed new habits and remember a bag whenever we pop out. Keys, wallet, phone, bags. But those taking the moral high ground – perhaps driving up in a car boot bulging with bags ‘so they’re simply always there when you’ll need them’ – are ignoring the fact supermarkets plough enormous resource into tempting us into stores when we weren’t planning to go, and while there making more impulse purchases than our bag requirement calculations had factored for.

The bag charge was the stick in the government’s original policy. It’s mostly worked for single-use bags: sales are down by the boatload since it was introduced, though have crept up in the last count. Bags for life sales don’t have to be reported, so it’s hard to gauge how consumers are actually reusing them or not – the Co-op argues many shoppers “have simply traded up”.

But in the wake of the price hikes, it’s now on supermarkets to start thinking more about carrots for consumers to remember their bags. Loyalty programmes present the perfect place for this – prizes for not scanning a new bag for life four weeks in a row, for example. Otherwise, pushing up the price of something no one ever wants to buy, but sometimes has to – more so as we head towards the frazzled frenzy of Christmas shopping – could be taken as plain mean-spirited.

Topics