October 5 is a big day. October 5 will make a small line in history as ‘No free bag day’. From Monday, supermarkets must charge shoppers in England 5p for carrier bags. The idea behind the cost is to stop litter and waste, and brings England in line with the rest of the UK.

Ireland introduced then charge in 2002, Wales in 2011 and Scotland followed last year.

Each nation reported a massive drop in the use of the bags as a result and it is hoped that in England it will cut plastic bag use by 80 per cent.

For many, the ruling for English shoppers is long overdue.

Last year, our supermarkets lavished 7.6 billion bags on their customers.

That’s the equivalent of 140 per person – if everyone one of us actually shopped.

The bag levy applies to all major stores, the Government has said it would be ‘costly and unfair’ to force the change onto small shops that employ fewer than 250 staff.

But a survey by the Association of Convenience Stores found about 8,000 corner shops, newsagents and village stores across England are planning to introduce the charge anyway.

Peter Gardner, manager at Gretna Gateway retail outlet, says there have been few difficulties from the companies at his centre since the ruling was introduced in Scotland.

He says: “It probably took two months for people to get used to it.

“Speaking personally, my wife never leaves home without being armed with bags.

“The general feedback up here is it has not had an enormous negative impact, but has had a very positive impact because it has massively reduced the number of plastic bags in circulation.

“What was a single-life bag is now heading towards being a cat – it has five, six or nine lives before being binned.

“And if stores make it clear where the 5p charge for the bags is going, that removes any real objection people have to paying for it.”

Mike Bareham, managing director of the waste management and recycling business Cumbria Waste Group will be happy to see fewer of them.

He says that although the bags are very light and a fraction of the waste mass dealt with, they cause a disproportionate amount of trouble for his workers. “It is tiny, but it punches above its weight really because plastic bags cause so much trouble.

“At recycling plants, people bring them and they don’t know what to do with them. They will put them in with glass bottles and plastic bottles and they contaminate the recycling process and take time to be sifted out.

“They can get caught in the wind easily and we have to go to extreme lengths at our landfill sites at Hespin Wood and Flusco to stop them from littering the surrounding area.

“We have to erect big nets around where we are tipping to catch them and then send people out to recover them.

“From a professional point of view, I will not miss them.”

There is also a major environmental boost to be gained from cutting back on the plastic shopping bags.

Three years after banning them in 2008, the Chinese government reported that plastic bag use in shops had dropped by 24 billion bags.

This saved around 60,000 tons of plastic – the equivalent of saving 3.6 million tons of oil, 5 million tons of coals and cutting carbon dioxide emissions by over 10 million tons.

Jill Perry wonders why England is so far behind the rest of the UK and also countries such as South Africa, Uganda, Somalia, Rwanda, Botswana, Kenya and even Ethiopia in introducing the regulation.

The secretary of the Allerdale and Copeland Green Party says: “It has proved to be a success in other countries and has been talked about for a long time.

“It will cut the tonnes of plastic we send to landfill where it is also a toxic leachate and carbon emissions will be saved from not producing so many bags.”

Not all the money raised from the 5p sales will go to charities.

Some will go on the costs of administration and there will also be a VAT charge by the Treasury on the sale of the bags.

At Morrisons, proceeds generated from the levy on carrier bags support the Morrisons Foundation. The Foundation aims to support good causes throughout the UK which are making a difference to people’s lives.

It is open to application for grants from registered charities across the UK.

Over the last reporting year proceeds generated from charging 5p for more than 9.5 million carrier bags in Morrisons’ Welsh stores generated £479,822 with almost £400,000 going to the Foundation.

In Scotland, the store handed out 9.2 million bags over the same period, with £383,000 going to the Foundation.

For Sainsbury’s in Wales, those figures were 1.7 million bags handed out, bringing in almost £72,000 for the company’s charity fund.

In Scotland, 1.6 million bags were handed out and £67,000 was raised for charity.

Tesco asks its customers which charity should benefit from the 5p charge cash.

In Scotland the store is expected to donate £1m to Keep Scotland Beautiful from the sale of 5p bags over the past year and a further £800,000 to Keep Wales Tidy from the charges for bags in the Principality.

Over the past year, Asda generated £270,000 for good causes in Wales and in the first six months since the charge was introduced in Scotland, a further £156,000 was raised for social and community projects north of the border.

Aldi and Lidl have always charged for all their bags.