A tax that has greatly reduced plastic bag consumption in Sweden for four years is to be lifted on Friday, despite warnings that the move could lead to use rising back to previous levels. Since the introduction of the tax worth 0,25 cents in May 2020, the use of plastic bags in the country has fallen sharply, The Guardian reports. In 2019, before the tax was introduced, people in Sweden used an average of 74 plastic bags per person each year. In 2023, this number had dropped to 17.
The law was introduced after the EU’s 2015 plastic bag directive required member states to dramatically reduce use. Among those who criticized the end of the tax in Sweden was the government’s Environmental Protection agency, which warned that the tax was still needed to consolidate new behaviour.
“We don’t think the government should remove the tax,” said Asa Stenmarck, a spokeswoman for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. Â “We think they could have evaluated this properly before making a decision,” she added.
Last year, Sweden’s centre-right coalition government, backed by the far-right Sweden Democrats, announced the tax would be scrapped. She said that the country’s plastic bag consumption was already below the EU target, which meant that the tax was “not considered necessary for its purpose”.