Marks & Spencer’s controversial 5p food carrier bag charge has resulted in an 80 per cent drop in the number of bags used since the scheme’s introduction in May.

About 70 million fewer bags have been used in the past 10 weeks.

M&S executive chairman Sir Stuart Rose said: “M&S’s carrier bag charging policy has provoked a lot of debate, but these figures show that the overwhelming majority of our customers support charging and are already helping us make a huge difference by bringing their own bags when they shop with us.”

The charging scheme was introduced as part of the retailer’s Plan A environmental programme, under which M&S aims to reduce carrier bag use by a third and send no waste to landfill from its operations by 2012.

From today until Sunday, M&S will give shoppers a free bag for life with all food transactions to “encourage even more customers to think twice about the number of single use carrier bags they use”, it said.