Support for mandatory charging for carrier bags is backed by the public, a new poll has revealed.
Charity Keep Scotland Beautiful published the results to coincide with the launch of its campaign on the issue and ahead of discussions about charging regulations at Holyrood.
In the YouGov poll of 1,037 Scottish adults, those supporting the proposals to charge for bags outnumbered those opposing them by 54% to 28%.
The results show 22% strongly support the proposals, 32% tend to support them, while 14% tend to oppose them and 14% strongly oppose them. A further 14% neither support nor oppose them and the remainder do not know.
The Scottish Government wants to bring in mandatory charging for almost all single-use carrier bags from October 2014.
Shoppers will have to pay a minimum of 5p per bag, with net proceeds to be donated to good causes.
Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead is due to give evidence on the proposed regulations at Holyrood's Environment Committee, which will recommend to Parliament whether they should be approved.
Mark Bevan, head of campaigns at Keep Scotland Beautiful, said: "The introduction of the charge in Scotland has the potential to make a real difference."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article