Plastic carrier bag charges

In 2018, Cobbs are really trying to reduce our use of ‘throw-away’ plastic at our farm shop and café. Since the Government introduced a 5p charge on single-use plastic bags in England they have reduced their use by nearly 90%.

At the moment, shops with fewer than 250 employees do not have to charge customers for plastic bags, but there are plans to extend this law to smaller shops soon. So with this in mind we have made the decision that from Tuesday 1st May we will be charging customers 5p for a plastic bag. The plastic bags we provide are bio-degradable but we would encourage customers to re-use plastic bags they already have at home or better still use a bag for life instead.

We have our own bags for life available for £3.

Elsewhere in our farm shop, we are working our way towards being plastic bag free in our fruit and veg area and we offer customers paper bags for this and our bakery items. As a food retail business, abolishing the use of plastic entirely is not going to be possible but we are consciously reviewing all the areas that we can improve and working with our suppliers to provide better packaging solutions on some lines.

In our café, we’ve already replaced our plastic straws with paper ones and are looking into alternative options to replace our takeaway coffee cups in the future. In the mean time, E-coffee cups are available in our cafés for £9.95 for customers to buy, a free hot drink is included in this price. You can also visit us with your own reusable coffee cups and recieve 10% off your takeaway hot drinks too.