Lidl, Jumbo, Plus and Aldi will stop providing shoppers with free plastic and paper bags for loose vegetables and fruit this year, the supermarkets have agreed in a ‘plastic pact’ with the government and packaging sector.

Albert Heijn stopped providing free plastic bags for fruit and veg which had not been prepacked last year.

The retailers want to reduce the use of packaging and make reusable bags the norm, and ‘consumers will have to get used to the change quickly,’ Carlijn Röell, director of Plastic Pact NL, told the AD on Friday.

The five supermarkets say between them they will save 126 million plastic and 10 million plastic bags a year with the move, the AD reported.

Lidl will start phasing out single use bags after the summer and Jumbo says it will start working on the transition in the coming months. Aldi told the AD it will switch when its current supply of plastic bags is finished.

Albert Heijn began replacing plastic bags with re-usable bags costing 30 cents each last year.

Shopping

Shops were banned from giving their clients free plastic bags to carry their shopping in 2016 and research two years ago found that 94% of shoppers consider it completely normal to take their own bags to the supermarket.

In addition, 85% of shoppers say they do not consider it a problem to be asked to pay for a bag – although 9% are adamant that if they buy something, they should get a free bag as well, the research found.