Will Charging for Supermarket Carrier Bags Save the Environment?

This issue of "free" supermarket carrier bags in the UK, and how environmentally friendly it suddenly is to be against them, and start charging for them is one of the most naive pieces of spin I've ever seen.

Firstly, Marks and Spencer are getting a lot of good publicity off their decision to start charging for carrier bags, in a bid to save the environment, but surely one of their carrier bags contains less packaging than 4 of their Coxes apples, for instance? MS are one of the heaviest users of plastic packaging, and biodegradable or otherwise is not the issue here, considering people often forget the amount of greenhouse emissions and waste of oil resources in actually manufacturing all this packaging in the first place. As a store that is big on presentation to help maximise profits, they have successfully managed to deflect attention from their excessive use of packaging.

and they are not alone, I feel guilty every time I look at the huge rubbish bag full of plastic packaging I've generated from cooking even a simple meal. The amount of energy used to produce all that packing and transport it to me was surely way in excess of the calorific value I got out of it.

So, no, banning pastic bags, or a tax on plastic bags is definitely not the answer. But hey, it certainly, temporarily at least, deflects attention from the real issues, doesn't it?