No plastic bag issue in Germany?

In 2010, it was estimated that almost 100 billion plastic carrier bags were placed on the EU market. This amounts to every EU citizen using 198 plastic carrier bags per year, which represents more than one bag per day for each European household.

As such, by charging or banning plastic bags, the European Commission believes its new proposal will reduce plastic bag use by 80 percent in European Union member states.

However, this is not an outright EU-wide ban. The EC said that member states will design for themselves the measures they deem most effective, which includes charges, national reduction targets or a ban under certain conditions.

But over in Germany, a new report claims that the consumption of plastic bags in Germany is low in comparison with the rest of Europe. This is according to a study by GVM, the German Society for Packaging Market Research, on occasion of today's congress of the Federal environment agency UBA. The study was commissioned by IK (German Association for Plastic Packaging and Films), BKV (Platform for Plastics and Recovery), and HDE (German Retail Association).

In 2012, six billion plastic carrier bags were put in circulation in Germany. This corresponds to a total volume of 86 kilotons or a consumption of 76 carrier bags per inhabitant per year, which is significantly lower than the average throughout Europe, the study claims.

The study demonstrates that carrier bags make up a share of three percent in the consumption of plastic packaging, or 0.17 percent in the composition of municipal waste. In the view of GVM, the relevance of carrier bags to waste in Germany can therefore be considered limited. Furthermore, they argue, plastic bags in Germany are predominantly handled in a highly responsible manner. The study shows that 48 percent of all carrier bags are reusable and that 72 percent of end consumers use carrier bags a number of times. Only 11 percent of food and chemist's products (FMCG) sold by retail are taken home by end consumers in plastic carrier bags that are used for the first time. Kai Falk, director of HDE, said in the news release: "The food trade made a point some decades ago already through its commitment to hand out carrier bags to end consumers against a fee only."

According to the GVM study, interventions suggested by the EU, such as prohibiting plastic carrier bags with a film thickness below 50μm, which include many carrier bags that are perfectly suitable for reuse, are not necessary and would not be constructive either.

IK General Manager Dr. Jürgen Bruder: "The German system to collect and recycle packaging ensures that plastic carrier bags do not end up in the landscape but are sorted for mechanical recycling and energy recovery. Due to these perfectly functioning waste management structures, there is no need for action in Germany."