Europe's lawmakers this week approved a new initiative to tackle environmental degradation.
In the latest plenary session of the European Parliament (EP), the EP environmental committee voted in favour of a proposal to reduce the use of the most common and polluting plastic carrier bags.
Under the proposal, EU member states would be able to choose between two policy options: reducing the average yearly consumption of such bags to 90 lightweight bags per citizen by 2019 and 40 by 2025, or charging for bags by 2018.
Plastic carrier bag litter is seen as a major environmental problem as it pollutes water and causes damage to aquatic ecosystems.
Lightweight plastic bags thinner than 50 microns, which account for the vast majority of such bags used in the EU, are less reusable than thicker models and become waste more quickly. They are also more likely to become litter.
The EP also proposed phasing out bags which fragment, rather than biodegrade. These 'oxo-degradable' bags are made from a by-product of oil refining. But this proposal was quashed when the UK government opposed the ban.
In 2010, EU citizens used an estimated average of 198 plastic carrier bags, some 90 percent of which were lightweight. Consumption of these bags is expected to grow further. Estimates also suggest that over eight billion plastic carrier bags became litter in the EU in 2010.
This year, France joined Italy in banning all single-use plastic bags that were not biodegradable and compostable. French ecology minister Ségolène Royal claimed the move would create jobs in France to produce biodegradable bags.
However, French packaging industry bosses and retailers doubted that all such bags could be easily replaced with alternatives.
When shops in France started charging for bags over a decade ago, the number of plastic sacks distributed at checkouts dropped from 10.5 billion in 2002 to 700 million in 2011.
However, as many as 12 billion disposable bags are still supplied at fruit and vegetable counters in supermarkets and at street markets. French retailers argue that there are as yet no alternatives to these sacks that are commercially viable and sufficiently hygienic.
Paper bags do not have a particularly positive environmental footprint either, while biodegradable bags can cost two to four times their plastic counterparts. The remaining alternative - pre-packaged produce - consumes even more plastic material than a simple sack.
The deadline of 2016 to replace all fruit and vegetable sacks with biodegradable bags is unrealistic, said French retail federation Federation of Commerce and Distribution (FCD). Local producers currently do not have the capacity to meet demand and so most sacks would have to be imported, running contrary to the French government's objective of reducing the country's dependence on foreign imports, it said.
Moreover, the FCD claims, it would cost the retail industry an extra 300 million euros, most of which would have to be passed onto consumers at a time when household budgets are already under pressure.