As 5-cent charge looms, consumers can do more to kick plastic bag habit

FROM Monday (Jul 3), most supermarket operators in Singapore will begin charging their customers a fee of five cents for each plastic bag they take at the checkout counter.

It’s a move that has been years in the making, and one that the authorities and environmentalists will hope can, finally, result in an improvement in bringing down the use of single-use plastics.

Singapore has grappled with the problem of plastic bags for the past 20 years, or even longer. There isn’t an easy solution to this, given how the vast majority of the population relies on these free plastic bags to place their daily rubbish and then discard these bags down high-rise chutes. Many people also reuse the bags to carry items when they go out.