The retail industry's attempts to curb the use of disposable plastic carrier bags took perhaps its most significant step forward yesterday, after Marks & Spencer became the first major retailer to announce it is to charge for plastic bags.

Under the plans, which will be introduced in all M&S stores from the beginning of May, customers will be charged five pence for each food carrier bag they use.

The move follows the trialling of the scheme at stores in Northern Ireland and the South West of England, which saw use of food carrier bags drop by 70 per cent.

Sir Stuart Rose, chief executive of Marks & Spencer, said that when rolled out nationally the scheme had the potential to save 280m bags per year. "We want to make it easy for our customers to do their bit to help the environment and our trials have shown us that they want to take action," he added.

The company said that in the weeks running up to the charge it would make more durable reusable bags available for free to customers so they could prepare for the new scheme. It also announced that all the money raised through the charges would be donated to the company's partner charity Groundwork to invest in green neighbourhood projects.

The move – which today won a front-page endorsement from the Daily Mail following the launch this week of its "Banish the Bag" campaign – is likely to step up pressure on other retailers to follow suit and increase their efforts to reduce plastic bag waste.

A spokesman for the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said that a wide range of retailers had committed to cutting the environmental impact of their plastic bags by 25 per cent by the end of this year and were making progress towards meeting that target through a variety of approaches, including using bags with more recycled content and incentivising bag re-use.

However, he admitted that the M&S decision to charge for bags could see other retailers follow. "They will all be watching this change very closely and will no doubt be considering doing something similar," he said. "Some will follow suit and others will not, depending on their judgement of what their customers want."