Shoppers are being urged to reuse their plastic bags as part of efforts to cut the billions of carrier bags handed out each year.

According to the Environment Department (Defra), consumers get through an average of more than 160 new carrier bags each year - mounting up to 13,000 in their lifetimes.

Last year, some 9.9 billion carrier bags were handed out in the UK which, if laid to end, would be enough to reach the moon and back seven times, Defra said.

The Government is launching the "get a bag habit" campaign in a bid to get people to reuse their old bags.

A YouGov poll of almost 2,500 shoppers to provide "top tips" for remembering to use bags more than once found almost half of people (49%) who reuse plastic bags keep them in their car and almost a third (29%) keep them in their handbag.

The new campaign with the British Retail Consortium (BRC) follows voluntary agreements by stores to reduce carrier bag use, which have seen the number of bags cut by more than a quarter (26%) since 2006.

In December the seven major supermarket chains - Asda, the Co-operative, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's, Somerfield, Tesco and Waitrose - agreed a new target to cut the number of single use bags handed out by half by the end of May.

Environment Minister Jane Kennedy said: "Retailers and the public have already made great steps in the right direction and I think if we can really can 'get a bag habit' and remember to reuse our bags, it puts us on the right track to doing even more to reduce the amount of waste we're sending to landfill."

Jane Milne, business environment director at the BRC, said: "Customers have done a great deal to help us reduce the number of carrier bags issued each year by over a quarter.

"Now we all need to redouble our efforts to reach our target of halving new bag numbers by this May."