A leading British industrialist has attacked Ireland's much-lauded plastic bag tax as "environmental nonsense".
While reducing the number of plastic carrier bags in circulation, the tax has led to a massive increase in the use of paper bags, which are more harmful to the environment, according to Cameron McLatchie, chairman of British Polythene Industries.
He says his company has seen a big increase in sales of its plastic refuse sacks in the Republic. Because of hygiene concerns, large retailers are shrink-wrapping more products such as bananas, he says.
The Department of Environment says the bag tax has been "an outstanding success" with a 90 per cent fall in the consumption of plastic bags leading to a massive reduction in litter.
While generally popular with the public, the Government has decided to increase the tax from 15c to 22c from July because of the declining impact of the measure.
Mr McLatchie said the Irish tax was "daft" because it did not also ban paper bags. "Paper carrier bags have a much greater environmental impact than plastic bags. They need 10 times the energy and resources needed to make the product and deliver it to the consumer."
Plastic bags were thin and lightweight but their paper equivalents had to be much thicker to deliver the same strength, he said. "We used to deliver a pallet-load of plastic bags each month to shops on Grafton Street. Now we need a full 40ft truck to meet their needs for paper bags."
Though head of Europe's largest plastic bag manufacturer, Mr McLatchie insisted he was speaking objectively. He pointed out that he used to own two factories making paper bags.
He also questioned whether paper is biodegradable in a landfill. "There are landfills in New York where fully-readable copies of the Wall Street Journal from 1929 have been dug up."