Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of introducing measures to encourage fast food restaurants to use plates or re-usable containers.

From October this year, we will ban the supply of single use plastic plates and cutlery, as well as expanded and extruded polystyrene food and drinks containers. Government guidance on the ban makes it clear businesses should prepare by considering reusable alternatives..

The introduction of the Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging regulations will encourage businesses to think carefully about how much packaging they use, and to design and use packaging that is easily recyclable. It will also encourage use of reusable and refillable packaging.

Re-use has a significant role to play in driving down unnecessary waste. We are working to identify measures that could be used to encourage greater use of reusable packaging, but we haven’t specifically assessed measures targeting non-plastic plates in fast food restaurants. We remain committed to introducing re-use obligations and will bring forward our proposals with the intention of introducing these in 2025.