Research and analysis

Carrier bag charge: summary of data in England

A summary of the data on single-use plastic carrier bags in England.

Applies to England

Documents

Details

Since 5 October 2015, large shops in England have been required by law to charge 5 pence for all single-use plastic carrier bags. From 21 May 2021, the charge for single-use plastic carrier bags was raised to 10 pence and extended to all businesses, though the reporting requirements continue to apply to large retailers only. They are required by law to report certain information to Defra, and they provide other information on a voluntary basis.

These publications summarise the data collected by Defra for:

  • the eighth year – from 7 April 2023 to 6 April 2024
  • the seventh year – from 7 April 2022 to 6 April 2023
  • the sixth year – from 7 April 2021 to 6 April 2022
  • the fifth year – from 7 April 2020 to 6 April 2021

We publish the full datasets on data.gov.uk.

You can find data for previous years (2015 to 2020) on the National Archives.

Updates to this page

Published 30 July 2016
Last updated 19 September 2024 + show all updates
  1. Added the single-use plastic carrier bags charge: data for England 2023 to 2024.

  2. Added the summary data for 2022 to 2023.

  3. Added the single-use plastic carrier bags charge: data for England 2021 to 2022. Added a line to state from 21 May 2021, the charge for single-use plastic carrier bags was raised to 10p and extended to all business.

  4. Added the summary data for 2019 to 2020.

  5. Added the 7 April 2018 to 6 April 2019 data.

  6. Updated following further checks with retailers. The total voluntary donation figure for 2017 to 2018 has been revised due to errors in reporting. Other minor revisions have been made to the donation, gross and net proceeds figures for 2016 to 2017 only.

  7. Added the summary data for 2017 to 2018.

  8. Data added for the first full year from 7 April 2016 to 6 April 2017.

  9. First published.

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