Morrisons supermarket is to start selling paper shopping bags in all its stores from May after customers concerns about plastic use.
The UK’s fourth biggest supermarket will use paper bags next week in Wales followed by England and Scotland. The scheme will take 1,300 tonnes of plastic out of the environment each year.
Morrisons have been trialling selling paper bags alongside plastic reusable carrier bags in eight Welsh stores. It will start to sell both types for 20p after phasing out 5p carrier bags in the past year in England, Wales and Scotland. Removing the 5p bags led to a 25% reduction in overall bag sales.
Morrisons marketing director Andy Atkinson said: “We are taking another meaningful step that will remove an estimated 1,300 tonnes of plastic out of the environment each year.
“Our customers have told us that reducing plastic is their number one environmental concern so introducing the paper bag across the nation will provide another way of reducing the plastic in their lives.”
Morrisons said the paper bags are strong enough to carry up to 16kg or more than 14 standard wine bottles. They can be recycled and reused.
A spokeswoman said: “The amount of times a customer can reuse the bags depends on how the bag is treated but there is no reason that this bag cannot be reused as many times as the plastic one it is replacing,
“We have carried out testing on these bags with our colleagues and people have already been re-using them for a few months with no issues,” she added.
Morrisons 20p plastic bags are made using plastic waste collected from the back of their stores and depots. They are the only UK supermarket to do this.
