I'M really looking forward to October this year because then England can hold its head up and be counted among the responsible nations. It's taken far too long but at last we'll have joined the growing international community that charges for plastic bags and puts environmental responsibility before commercial interests.

We have come late to the party as many countries made this sensible decision some time ago; the list is a long one and world wide. It includes Mexico, Bangladesh, Belgium, China, Brazil, Germany, Canada, half the states in the US, and many African countries such as Kenya, Botswana, Ethiopia and Uganda.

Closer to home Northern Ireland began charging 5p over two years ago, and has reduced the use by over 200 million bags, as well as providing almost £5 million for environmental projects.

Wales pioneered the new policy by charging for plastic bags in 2011, and they have reduced the use by over 90 percent, saving on the plastic in almost 500 million bags each year.

Scotland began charging last October and since then there's been a reduction of around 80 percent in the number of bags used, with many charities benefiting from the 5p charge. It's certainly time for England to follow suit as we use over eight billion bags a year at the moment, half of them only used once, and most of them end up in the waste stream.

While plastic film only makes up a small proportion of all the plastic waste that includes food containers, such as yogurt pots, and drinks bottles, it's nearly all made from petrochemicals, that is oil, and so contributes significantly to increasing carbon dioxide levels.

World wide over one million plastic bags are used every minute, and even in Europe, with its tight regulation, over half the plastic waste ends up in land fill. There's a growing trend for energy from waste plants, and this certainly helps to use up some of this unnecessary waste.

Indeed a French waste firm, Veolia, is currently building a state of the art energy from waste plant at Cross Green in east Leeds, and it will burn over 200,000 tonnes of black bag waste every year. Another French firm is also building an alternative form of energy from waste plant at Marley near Keighley.

One of the problems with plastic is that it doesn't decay readily, and left alone it could take over 500 years for it to disappear. We should be ashamed that we are now adding as much plastic to the oceans as the weight of all the fish we take out, over eight million tonnes a year, and the figure is growing.