Why are plastic bags making a comeback – and how to stop it?

The number of single-use plastic bags sold in England has risen by 7% in the past year, according to Defra data. It is the first time sales have risen since the mandatory 5p (later 10p) charge was introduced, save for one pandemic year when the charge was temporarily suspended.

Among the ‘major retailers’ alone – the traditional big four, M&S, Co-op and Waitrose, by Defra’s measure – sales rose by nine million in the 12 months to April. Morrisons and Sainsbury’s – responsible for the biggest increases from 2023 to 2024 of five million and 2.5 million bags respectively – have both blamed booming online orders.

But with Tesco and Waitrose reporting they haven’t sold a single-use bag since 2023, and Asda and M&S seeing plastic bag sales fall, the situation clearly isn’t that simple.

So what’s behind online grocery’s bag problem? And is there the will and the way to overcome it?

Most supermarkets have stripped plastic bags from online deliveries; Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s did so in 2019. But some have remained tied to the carrier.

Ocado – which, according to M&S’s May annual report, had “grown faster than the market in value and volume for the last 17 consecutive four-weekly periods” – says single-use plastic bags are “designed to minimise emissions and waste, while keeping customer orders efficient and products in excellent condition”.

It adds that using bags means items like bleach and chicken don’t have to be individually wrapped to avoid cross-contamination.

Hooked on Plastic

Saabira Chaudhuri, author of Consumed: How Big Brands Got Us Hooked on Plastic, doesn’t buy it. “I don’t think it’s a valid excuse that an entire online order needs to go in plastic bags to protect a small number of items that might be problematic,” she says.

“Supermarkets making this claim should focus on improving primary packaging – if chicken or bleach is leaking, have a conversation with suppliers and packers about changing it to stop leaks – and improve staff training so groceries are packed, loaded and unloaded to minimise the occurrence of these.”

Ocado claims without bags deliveries would “take much longer, as drivers would have to carry individual items to your door, drop them off, and repeat. This would require 10% more vans on the roads to make up for the time lost,” it says.

Again, Chaudhuri is not convinced. “It’s nonsensical. Other retailers hand over groceries in reusable crates, recipients quickly unload these and hand the crates back – it’s not rocket science,” she adds.

At Iceland, the online channel is hitting “record sales” the supermarket said in its last financial filing. It too persists with bags for online orders.

“We are continuously reviewing our plastic bag processes,” Iceland director of product, process & sustainability Stuart Lendrum tells The Grocer. “We currently only use reusable and recyclable bags, made from recycled plastic, as part of our online delivery model.”

Read more:

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• What are the hurdles for the industry’s reusable packaging pledge?

• Supermarket single-use plastic bag sales increase 7%

• Packaging tax driving food inflation and worse to come, says Bank of England

Morrisons is working to pivot away from plastic bags for online deliveries. It says customers in more than half of the postcodes it delivers to now receive items in “a small crate” they unpack at the door.

“In the past six months, we have moved a further 12,500 of our customers to this bagless delivery system,” a spokeswoman adds.

However, the remaining postcodes still receive orders in bags as they are “fulfilled by our automated central fulfilment centre”.

In November, Morrisons announced it was phasing out deliveries of online orders from Ocado’s Erith CFC, while boosting orders through Ocado’s Dordon and expanding its store-pick fulfilment model. As overall Morrisons online orders increase, so have the number of bags.

Ocado and Morrisons ‘buy back’ plastic bags from customers for the 10p they were charged for them. The retailers say 89% of bags are returned in this way (they also buy back bags from other supermarkets).

These bags are recycled into “grey pellets which are processed into new bags”.

But Chaudhuri argues “recycling shouldn’t be the first port of call – it still takes energy to recycle something”. And what of the 11% that aren’t returned?

On-demand baggage

While most supermarkets have gone bagless for big basket online orders delivered by van in totes, fulfilling on-demand orders – via the likes of Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Just Eat and supermarkets’ own services – is still proving a problem.

Unlike totes, which drivers can take back once decanted, rapid delivery orders are handed to couriers – in bags.

Sainsbury’s says its increase in plastic bag sales is a result of growth over the past year in on-demand orders. However, it has since switched to paper bags.

“We have replaced these with paper bags and expect our single-use plastic bag sales to reduce significantly in line with this, by the next report,” it says.

Aggregator apps say the majority of their major supermarket partners now deliver in paper bags. But many stores deliver in ‘bags for life’ – charged for in the apps depending on how many are needed – which are not picked up by Defra’s ‘single-use’ count.

As online and on-demand grocery grows, the issue may get worse before it gets better.

DS Smith-commissioned research earlier this year estimates that the number of bags in use across all UK e-commerce is set to increase by 40% between now and 2030.

Consumers are not happy. Two-thirds want plastic bags phased out where replacements are available, a separate DS Smith survey shows, and over half think responsibility to reduce plastic sits with retailers.

“Single-use plastic bags are such low-hanging fruit for these retailers to get rid of,” Chaudhuri says. “It isn’t a difficult problem like how you’d deliver fresh meat or berries that need a shelf life of five days without plastic – to me this feels like laziness, or at best a bad habit.”