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All shops will have to charge at least 10p for plastic bags from today, as the 5p levy doubles. But will it help the environment?

Since the 5p plastic bag levy was introduced, the number of single-use plastic bags produced in the country has shrunk dramatically.

Instead, most supermarkets now sell reusable 'bags for life' made from thicker, more durable plastic.

Despite the bags' potential to be reused, some people are worried that bags for life are often only being used once, creating more problems than they're solving.

Here, we ask an expert about the most sustainable way to transport your weekly shop, and take a closer look at the kinds of bags supermarkets are selling.

Currently, no supermarkets sell single-use plastic bags in their stores. Most have replaced these with a variety of bags made from different materials, including thicker, reusable plastic.

So which type of material is best? According to Helen Bird, strategic engagement manager at sustainability charity Wrap, the actual material might be less important than you think.

'When you start looking at the environmental impact of bags, in a way it doesn't matter so much what they're made of,' she told Which?. 'The really important thing in order to reduce the environmental impact is to make sure that they are reused.'

It would seem that not everyone is reusing their bags though, which is why the Co-op is replacing its reusable plastic 'bags for life' with home-compostable bags that double as caddy liners for food-waste bins. Is this the future?

Yes and no. Giving your carrier bag a second life as a food-caddy liner is better than putting a plastic one into landfill, but not all councils offer a food-waste collection service.

Also, compostable bags don't break down into the earth quickly and simply. 'The difficulty with compostable bags is that they are only composted under very specific conditions,' says Bird.

Morrisons plans to remove all plastic bags, including bags for life, from its stores by 2022. It says it will replace them with reusable bags made from other materials, including durable paper bags.

'Everybody can recycle paper at home,' Bird says. 'However, people are less likely to reuse a paper bag than they are to reuse a bag made of other materials.'

Bird notes that this research was carried out with more 'papery' bags than Morrisons' new bags, which are 'very much designed to be a bag-for-life equivalent'. So it's possible this won't be the case with them.

As for cloth bags, Bird says research has shown that you need to reuse them more than 120 times in order for them to have less environmental impact than a single-use carrier bag. So reusing bags really is key.

Making supermarkets charge for carrier bags was never going to save the planet on its own, although it has had an impact.

'Overall, plastic carrier bags represent a really small proportion of plastic packaging,' says Helen Bird. 'So they are a drop in the ocean. But clearly if they get into the ocean, that is a terrible drop.'

Still, since the 5p bag charge was introduced, progress has been made. Wrap found that 94% of people now own a reusable bag, and that the percentage of people buying bags at the till has halved.

'But what we have also noticed, and particularly Greenpeace has been collating data on what we would call u201cso-called bags for lifeu201d, is that the number of those bags that have been placed on the market has actually increased slightly,' says Helen Bird.

Greenpeace data shows that supermarkets distributed 1.5bn bags for life in 2019. That's almost 57 bags per UK household, according to the campaign group, suggesting that most people are not really using them 'for life'.

This means about a quarter of people are buying a new bag for life every time they go shopping, according to Bird.

Time will tell if raising the charge to 10p puts a stop to this. But campaigners have suggested that supermarkets should be incentivising customers to reuse bags through rewards, not just charging people to buy them.

Supermarkets say their plastic bags for life are 'recyclable', but it's not usually as simple as putting them in your recycling bin at home.

'Local authorities tend not to collect plastic bags and wrapping,' says Bird. But you do have options. Many supermarkets will take old bags for life back from you for recycling, and replace them free of charge if you need a new one.

At the moment, not every supermarket branch offers this recycling service, but some chains have announced that they will make it more widely available.

As Helen Bird says, reusing bags is crucial, and we shouldn't be buying them regularly.

That said, shoppers are currently inundated with choice when it comes to the kinds of bags available at the checkout. So if you're in the market for a supermarket carrier to use again and again (and again and again), here's a breakdown of the kinds of bags you can buy at different superstores.

We've also listed whether online deliveries come bagged or unbagged.

Aldi click-and-collect orders come in 'compostable' tray liners. Orders from Deliveroo come in paper bags. You can return click-and-collect tray liners when you pick up your order.

Asda's online deliveries are bagless, although meat and fish are placed in single-use bags.

The reusable bags are made from recycled plastic.

The Co-op's online deliveries will use its compostable carriers once they've been rolled out.

Iceland has 50 stores that are plastic-bag free, so only the non-plastic bags are sold at these branches.

Online orders arrive bagged, although Iceland didn't tell us what kind of bags are used. It plans to trial doorstep bag recycling later this year.

Orders from Morrisons have been bagless since April 2021. Orders fulfilled by Ocado will be delivered in bags (see below).

Ocado deliveries are always bagged. You can hand these bags back to your delivery driver for 10p each, and they'll be recycled into new Ocado bags.

You can also hand in plastic bags from other supermarkets, meaning there could be Ocado bags out there made from Sainsbury's and Tesco bags.

Online orders come bagless. You can hand in plastic bags you've picked up in-store to your driver for recycling.

These come with no bags.

These are bagless by default, but you can ask for plastic bags for an 80p flat fee. Old bags can be taken for recycling.