In 2005, the Scottish Government issued a full environment impact assessment report on the effects of a proposed plastic bag fee. The Report contains the comparison between plastic and paper bags, outlined in the table below. The lightweight plastic bag was given a score of 1 in all categories as a reference point. A score greater than 1 indicates that a paper bag makes more contribution to the environmental problem than a lightweight plastic bag when normalised against the volume of shopping carried. The indicators take account of emissions which occur over the whole lifecycle