On Friday 22nd February, the Mayor of London called on Londoners to reuse their plastic bags and say ‘no’ to accepting new plastic bags. On average, Londoners use over 37 million new plastic bags each week – a weekly habit that adds to an annual total of 2.2 billion new plastic bags in the capital.

At the campaign launch in Oxford Circus last week the Deputy Mayor of London, Nicky Gavron, was joined by media partner thelondonpaper to encourage Londoners to use a reusable bag as well as reusing the plastic bags that they already have, instead of putting them in the bin where they will end up on landfill sites - this is a real waste of resources, causes harmful pollution and contributes to climate change.

The majority of the 2.2 billion new plastic bags received by Londoners each year end up in landfill and it is estimated that each bag can take up to 400 years to breakdown. If every Londoner cut out just one in every five of the new plastic bags they receive it would save almost 11,000 tonnes of carbon emissions – the equivalent of taking over 3,375 cars off the road for a year.

Speaking at the launch Deputy Mayor of London Nicky Gavron said:

It is extremely worrying that over 37m plastic bags are used by Londoners each week, the majority of which are not recycled or reused and end up in landfill sites or incinerated when we could be using a reusable bag instead. Today’s campaign is a suitable reminder for Londoners to stand back and look at the amount of rubbish they create on a weekly basis.

Jenny Jones, Green Party Member of the London Assembly said:

Using reusable shopping bags has to become the acceptable way of shopping. The 2.2 billion plastic shopping bags given out by retailers in the capital each year end up in landfill, incinerated, or floating in the sea as an environmental menace to wildlife. The public clearly wants a ban, and government must act by introducing a national tax similar to the one in Ireland that resulted in a 90 per cent reduction in usage of throwaway plastic bags.

Stefano Hatfield, editor of thelondonpaper said:

The environment is a top priority for thelondonpaper and our readers. We fully support this project, which will help reduce waste in the capital.