Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville
To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in achieving plastic recycling targets.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, since the resources and waste strategy of 2018 and the 25-year environment plan of January 2019, plastic recycling has moved up the political and public agenda—but not as quickly as it might, despite the sterling efforts of David Attenborough. I am grateful to the Green Alliance for its briefing.
Over the intervening years, the banning of some plastic-containing products has helped. However, this is a small piece of the problem. Previous television coverage of UK plastic export strategy showed waste being sent abroad on barges to Turkey, with children playing among toxic waste. This created public outcry, but the practice is ongoing. Earlier this year, an investigation found that 200 young people had died in Turkey’s recycling industry. The EU is introducing a total ban on exporting waste to non-OECD countries up to 2029 and strict limits on plastic exports to other OECD countries. Meanwhile, the UK gaily continues to export waste plastics.
Figures from July show that plastic packaging had decreased from 2.6 million tonnes in 2012 to 2.3 million tonnes in 2024—a small reduction. Figures achieved for recycling increased from 25.2% in 2012 to 51% in 2025—a better, but misleading, figure. In April 2024, a survey conducted by Greenpeace and Everyday Plastic estimated that UK households discard approximately 1.7 billion pieces of plastic weekly, which is around 60 pieces per household. We are up to our necks in plastic. Snack packaging and fruit and vegetable packaging are the items most responsible. Some 58% of plastic packaging thrown away was being incinerated, an increase from 46% in 2022.
This is nothing to be proud of. Raising awareness with the public is crucial to future success in reducing discarded plastic in our environment. Analysis published in October 2023 by WRAP, a brilliant organisation dedicated to reducing plastic waste, noted that local authority collection rates for plastic were improving, with 6.1 million tonnes of plastic packaging collected for recycling in 2021, a 4% increase on the previous year. I stress that local authority plastic waste collection is not the same as plastic waste recycling; they are two very different things.
Figures from 2019 indicate that 16.6% of the material that sorting facilities dealt with was contaminated. This means it was unsuitable for recycling. Local authorities up and down the country have diverse ways of tackling their responsibilities towards recycling. Having come from Somerset, where there was a combined waste strategy between the county and district—now a unitary council—with separated waste collections covering all recyclable products, I am aware of what is achievable. I now live in Hampshire, where all recyclable products except glass are collected together. This leads to contamination and poor recycling rates.
Throughout the country, there is a series of large and small recycling and processing plants to deal with waste, especially plastic. These recycling plants transform waste plastic into PET for future use in the soft drinks industry. However, partly due to the inferior quality of the recycling materials available to the plants, the import of cheaper virgin plastic and rising electricity costs, 21 of these reprocessing plants have shut down over the past two years. Some of these plants might have stayed open if the recyclable plastic collected had not been contaminated.
I referred earlier to the export of plastics for other countries to deal with. The UK remains reliant on exporting its plastic recycling waste, with 47% of accredited UK recycled plastic packaging reported as being exported; Turkey was the largest destination for these exports. This loophole in the legislation allows the export of waste to be included in recycling figures. This is a smoke and mirrors exercise. Neither the Government nor local authorities have recycled their plastics if all they have done is bundle them up and send them abroad. This is outrageous. We have no way of knowing precisely what is happening to it. Is it being discarded close to waterways or coastlines, where it will damage the environment of aquatic animals and fish? Can the Minister say whether the Government have a strategy to move towards preventing the export of recyclable plastic waste? If not, why not? Exporting plastic waste for recycling when we have adequate recycling plants in the UK that could process this waste is extraordinary, to say the least.
The cost of virgin plastic needs to be comparable with or higher than that of recycled plastic. Without this, our recycling is not competitive. Cheap virgin plastic imports undercut demand. Sadly, the UK market is currently flooded with cheap imports of virgin plastic from China, Africa and the Middle East. For recycling plants to thrive, they need two things: first, a supply of high-quality used plastic to recycle; and, secondly, electricity to be affordable. The Government could do more by placing tariffs on imported cheap virgin plastic, making UK recycled plastic affordable. The plastic packaging tax, currently set at £223.69 per tonne, has increased demand for recycled plastic. However, it takes no account of the origin of the plastic and offers our domestic recyclers only weak support. It reduces the price gap between virgin and recycled plastic but does not close the gap altogether; the system needs to be geared towards the home market.
I turn briefly to the deposit return scheme for recycled plastic bottles. It was first mooted in 2017 but we are now told that it will be rolled out in 2027; that is 10 years to implement, which is unacceptable. Can the Minister reassure us that the target of 2027 for a DRS will be met? To sort the problems of plastic waste, we need a strategy to include, but not be limited to, increasing the plastic packaging tax; banning the export of plastic waste; and swift implementation of a deposit return scheme.
I look forward to a positive response from the Minister on dealing with waste and reducing plastic pollution. This is not a “nice to do”; it is absolutely essential if we are to reduce plastic pollution.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. I thank her for securing this debate and setting out many important points.
As the noble Baroness said, we are up to our necks in plastic. In 2020 the previous Government banned plastic straws, stirrers, spoons and cotton buds, but that is nothing to be proud of—it is like trying to use a toothbrush to clean up the planet. It is easy to hold the previous Government at fault for the failure to progress plastic recycling, whether on the slow progress on reducing the use of plastic packaging, on optimising the design of packaging for recycling, on domestic collection, on domestic recycling provision or on the failure to regulate the Wild West of exporting materials for so-called recycling. Indeed, I do hold the previous Government responsible. I meet so many people who ask, “What happened to the bottle deposit scheme?”. Quite a few still remember the £20,000 donation from the Wine and Spirit Trade Association to the Conservative Party just before it used the internal market Act to kill Scotland’s well-advanced scheme.
While this is a long story of regulatory failure—not to mention the underfunding of the local authorities that have to deal with the mess created by giant multinational companies profiting from the use of dangerously toxic, polluting materials—there is a more fundamental problem on which I want to focus. Plastics are a material that simply do not fit within the model of a circular economy, which is of course an absolute necessity if we are to live within the boundaries of this terribly fragile, terribly poisoned, planet.
Glass can be recycled indefinitely, steel can be recycled indefinitely, aluminium can be recycled indefinitely and even paper can be recycled five to seven times. Plastic, however, can effectively only be downcycled. Even to get to that, plastics have to be sorted by colour and type, washed and shredded up. These processes burn large amounts of fossil fuel, produce waste—including large quantities of the microplastics and nanoplastics that are now polluting all our bodies—and contaminate water. Then they are most often turned into items of lesser value and quality; for example, plastic water bottles go to fleece jackets or carpet fibre. Why is that? It is because newly made plastic can have some 16,000 different chemicals added to it. Used plastic can have residues of pesticide, biocides, pharmaceuticals and other toxic chemicals, so when it is used for food purposes, it is usually mixed with virgin plastics to dilute the toxicity.
I point noble Lords to a study in the Journal of Hazardous Materials in 2022, which showed how antimony and well-known endocrine-disrupting chemicals, notably bisphenol A, migrate out of particularly recycled PET drink bottles into the products that they contain. We might want to think about how long even those downcycling possibilities will be around. As our understanding of the human and environmental health threat posed by microplastics and nanoplastics grows, who will want to wear a jacket shedding plastics into the air around their nose and mouth? Who will want to have their baby crawling over a plastic carpet, breathing in all the toxins and fibres that it is producing?
That is on the individual scale; to go back to the planetary scale, we have choked the planet with more than 10 billion tonnes of toxic plastic. About 460 million tonnes of plastic are being produced annually, and the fossil fuel merchants are aiming to treble that by 2050, as the market for their products as a fuel fast fades away. I therefore ask the Minister: what are the Government going to do, domestically and diplomatically, to stop this taking of carbon out of the very long-term storage in which nature put it and eventually, inevitably, pumping it into our already overheated air? This is something that has only been magnified by the new wheeze of so-called “advanced recycling”—sometimes called chemical recycling. There is nothing advanced about using heat or chemicals to melt down plastic to downcycle it into petrochemical products that are very likely to be burned as more dirty fossil fuel energy.
It is time to focus on the producers of this toxic material, and I would ask the Government to do so. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, spoke about educating consumers but, very often, consumers have no escape but to buy items in plastic—and that is the responsibility of the producers and retailers, not the consumers. I note a report from the Center for Climate Integrity from 2024, which lists the number of lies from plastic companies over decades, claiming that their products are recyclable and not harmful.
I finish by looking at both ends of the plastic journey. Two years ago, a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, highlighted the damage done by just one of the many toxic materials that go into making plastics—generally in poorer communities. At the other end, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, it is going to global South countries where people are being poisoned.
When we look at the waste pyramid, recycling is a very poor solution. It is the third choice; it should be used only when reducing the use of material or reusing products has proved absolutely impossible, not when it is slightly less convenient or slightly less profitable—when it is simply not possible. That means that the vast majority of the plastic products on our retail shelves today should not be there. We should not be looking to recycle them; we should be looking to get rid of them. What are the Government going to do to get us to that crucial goal?
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville for securing this debate and for highlighting in her very powerful speech the incredibly detrimental effects of plastic in the environment. As she says, successive UK Governments have failed to grasp the plastics issue with the urgency it actually needs.
However, I will start my intervention today with encouragement to the Government, and some congratulations at least for their ongoing efforts as regards the UN global plastics treaty. The Minister will know that the UN global plastics treaty has been in negotiations since 2022, and that it would be a game-changer. It is the first ever attempt to create a dedicated, legally binding plastics treaty.
In March 2022, the UN Environment Assembly agreed to develop the legally binding global agreement on plastics, covering the full life cycle, from production to disposal. The problem is that the negotiations are ongoing. The treaty is expected to include targets on ocean plastic pollution, microplastics, product standards and the reduction of single-use plastics, but whether it is adopted depends on overcoming the major sticking points. I would be very grateful if the Minister could say where he understands the negotiations are now.
The Minister in the other place, Emma Hardy, said:
“I’m hugely disappointed that an agreement wasn’t reached, but am extremely proud of the way the UK has worked tirelessly until the end”,
of that round of negotiations,
“to seek an ambitious and effective treaty”.
My question to the Minister is: what efforts is the UK making now to ensure those negotiations are still continuing? Would he agree that it is actually the fossil fuel producers that did not want to see that treaty succeed? This is for the very reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, alluded to—as fuel is phased out for transport use, they are finding other markets for their product. Until we can overcome that, the plastics treaty, which is so crucial, is not going to move forward.
Given this opportunity today, I must mention a plastics problem closer to our shores that really requires the Government’s urgent attention and some decisions from Ministers: the problem highlighted by the recent bio-beads spill at Camber Sands. However, that is by no means is the first disaster of this nature; I recall an incident near Truro, in Cornwall, some years ago. I declare an interest as someone who uses the beaches in the south-west a great deal, as do my family, and we enjoy them.
The bio-beads in question facilitate sewage treatment. It is perhaps ironic that the very things that treat sewage have ended up polluting the sea and the beaches to such a terrible degree. Surfers Against Sewage, to whom I pay tribute for their ongoing campaigning on all sorts of issues, explained the bio-beads issue. Once released, bio-beads behaved like any other microplastic and can be ingested by fish, seabirds and shellfish. They enter the food chain, carry harmful pollutants on their surface and pose health risks to humans.
There are modern alternatives, such as activated sludge systems. I am not going to go into those now, but the fact is that those systems have not been universally adopted. I understand that there are big costs implications. For example, South West Water still has eight plants that use bio-beads. Understandably, the Government have encouraged the water companies to focus on sewage overflows, which have been polluting our rivers and seas so harmfully, but the issue of how that sewage is treated simply has not been addressed. It is about not just the capacity of the sewage system but the sort of system that it is. That needs to be given more government attention.
In April 2025, the European Parliament, the European Council and the European Commission reached agreement on a long-awaited EU regulation to prevent plastic pellet losses into the environment, because, of course, they are a major source of microplastics pollution. That would address not only bio-beads but nurdles, which are the building blocks of plastic. That is how plastic gets shipped around before it gets made into whatever it is going to be made into. There have been some horrendous spills of nurdles at sea.
The EU has passed this regulation but, post-Brexit, we in the UK will not benefit from it. My question to the Minister is: what plans do the Government have to address nurdles and bio-beads? Will they introduce some similar regulation here so that these plastics are no longer wreaking havoc in our oceans?
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baronesses who have taken part in today’s debate. It is important that we reflect on both the importance of the recycling targets and the current situation we find ourselves in. Only if we reflect on both will we be able to reach our targets sustainably.
This debate was founded on Conservative principles and initiatives—principally, recycling targets, waste reduction, and our pragmatic and conservatist goals. Practically, the Conservatives have a good track record of creating and supporting recycling initiatives. In 2018, the Government of my noble friend Lady May of Maidenhead began funding the UK Plastics Pact, which was created with the aim of eliminating problematic or unnecessary single-use plastic packaging. UK Plastics Pact members now cover the entire UK plastics value chain and are part of an initiative being continued by the current Government. I congratulate them on that.
In 2020, we implemented a single-use plastic ban. The result of that is that our beaches have seen significant reductions in littering, plastic stemmed cotton buds dropped out of the UK’s top 10 most littered items, and we reached our lowest littering level in 28 years. That is tangible evidence of progress being made in achieving recycling targets. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that I would not scoff at these little things—they had a big impact. Getting rid of millions of those little plastic buds was a rather good success.
Last year, the Government set a statutory target to ensure that the total mass of residual waste does not exceed 287 kilograms per person by 2042—residual waste that contains plastic and is sent to landfill or incinerators. This was accompanied by a plastic-specific residual municipal waste target for 2027. If achieved, this would mark a 50% decrease from 2019.
In addition, we introduced the simpler recycling scheme in May last year, requiring firms to separate different types of recycling. The current Government saw the advantages of our approach and have continued and even extended the proposal to microfirms.
The previous Conservative Government were committed to reducing plastic waste within the bounds of our capabilities. We set target upon target; we matched them with regulations and produced guidance to make sure they were achievable. I am glad that the current Government have continued to build on Conservative targets and initiative. I am less glad, however, that they have not based their approach on the same Conservative principles of acting within our means. At the end of the previous Government, unemployment was below 5%. Inflation was at the target of 2%. The fact that the economy was relatively prosperous, compared with the current day, enabled us to take the pragmatic approach that the Government now attempt to copy.
Unfortunately, the Government do not have the luxury of a Conservative-run economy. Regulations such as the simpler recycling scheme work when businesses are doing well. They work when margins are wide enough for businesses to afford the extra costs that come with government intervention. They do not work when the number of payrolled employees is falling by 20,000 a month, as is currently happening, and when businesses—especially small businesses—are hammered with tax increases that they inevitably must pass on to employees or consumers to stay afloat.
I regret to say that it is therefore not the time to implement a host of new regulations that burden businesses with new costs. Extending our simpler recycling scheme is welcome in theory but should be opposed in practice. Not only will it impose an extra administrative burden on microfirms at a time when they can least afford it, but it is overly cumbersome. One misplaced bit of waste and an entire batch of recycling is ruined. That is not efficient enough for a system that aims to eliminate unnecessary plastics. In fact, the Confederation of Paper Industries says that it takes only one dirty pizza box in a whole bin to ruin a whole binload of paper recycling. We have already heard from the noble Baronesses that similarly contaminated plastic bottles can ruin a whole consignment of plastic.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, voiced concerns about the speed of implementation. She wants it to go faster. My concern is that the Government are seeking to implement things too quickly. UKHospitality and the British Soft Drinks Association have voiced their concerns about the scale and speed of implementation. They are worried it will be another anti-growth measure brought in by the Government.
It has taken Germany 30 years to slowly build up its deposit return scheme. It was only two years ago, after being at it for 28 years, that Germany introduced glass to it. The current Government are trying to do in three years what it took Germany 30 years to do. I have no criticism of the Government if they must go past their 2027 deadline, because they are trying to do too much too quickly, which will be damaging to industry.
We know that those who create growth and the conditions to implement these green initiatives are those who create jobs and enterprise. They need the right regulations around them—those that do not overburden them and allow them to comply with the plastic regulations that we all want to implement. Individual regulations seem to have merit, but simpler recycling, deposit return and EPR responsibilities, if collectively implemented at the same time, will impose too many regulations at too high a cost. Individually, they are all good things but introducing them all together could be damaging.
The UN treaty and a question about the Government’s position on it have been raised. I am afraid that we will never get a unanimous United Nations treaty on this, and it is not necessary. It will be blocked by the oil-producing countries. I understand that about 130 user countries, including us and others, are looking to reduce plastic waste. The Government should continue to ignore attempts to create a United Nations treaty signed by all and instead work with those 130 countries that want to reduce plastic waste. It is in our power to do so. This is rather like the United States complaining, “Could South America please stop sending all the drugs to the States that our people are using?”, instead of saying to Americans, “Stop using drugs and there’ll be no market for South America to send them to”. If we, the user countries of plastic, use less plastic products, then so what if Saudi Arabia and others want to pump out more oil? They will have no one to sell it to—or they will not be able to sell as much. There is certain logic in what I suggest.
Keeping within our plastic targets is a noble goal and should be adhered to as much as we can, but it must not come at the expense of business and enterprise. I am grateful that the Government intend to continue this goal, but I hope they do so prudently and carefully. I look forward to hearing what reforms and adjustments the Government intend to make to reflect the current economic landscape.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to address this important question on the progress that His Majesty’s Government have made towards achieving our plastic recycling targets. I am also grateful to all those who have contributed to the debate, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for bringing the debate in the first place.
The Government inherited a situation, as was reflected in the noble Baroness’s contribution, whereby the waste from household recycling rates had stagnated at around 43% to 45% since 2015. We are fully committed to reversing this trend, and building a sustainable future where resources are valued, waste is minimised, and our economy thrives. I am pleased to report significant strides forward through a comprehensive programme of reform. It is worth noting that in 2023 UK plastic recycling rates were 52.5%, which is a good 10.5% above the EU average. We should criticise, therefore, where there are grounds for criticism, but we should also praise our efforts. Collectively, we have made progress.
From January this year, the extended producer responsibility for packaging, or pEPR, came into force. This is a landmark reform, and shifts responsibility for managing packaging waste from local taxpayers to the businesses that produce and use packaging. Producers will now fund the full net cost, approximately £1.4 billion annually across the UK, creating powerful incentives to design packaging that is recyclable and reusable. To improve recycling outcomes across the UK, pEPR will bring in over a billion pounds per year in revenue. That is something that we should celebrate. From the second year of the scheme, we are introducing fee modulation to reward producers using recyclable packaging with lower fees, while charging more for hard-to-recycle packaging. This “red, amber, green” system will drive innovation in packaging design and materials selection, and will drive better behaviour as well.
We have set ambitious material-specific recycling targets through to 2030. For plastic packaging, we aim to achieve 59% recycling by 2027, rising to 65% by 2030: this is a substantial increase from the 43.8% achieved in 2018, and significantly beyond the 55% target that the EU has set for 2030: we expect to meet or exceed that this year.
On 31 March this year, Simpler Recycling came into effect for workplaces with 10 or more employees across England, ensuring consistency in what can be recycled. From 31 March next year, local authorities will collect the same core recyclable waste streams from all households, including glass, metal, plastic, paper and card, and food waste.
By standardising collections, we will reduce contamination—mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, in her contribution—as well as improve material quality, and provide the recycling industry with confidence to invest. This represents a transformative step forward. The noble Baroness talked about the export of plastic waste, and we recognise that there are a number of factors that have caused issues in the UK recycling sector. We feel that the shift to pEPR will help transform this, as I have already set out. The noble Baroness blamed contamination, but probably the cheap price of virgin plastic is a greater factor in that move away than contamination alone.
On export of plastic waste specifically—following the noble Baroness’s question—I hope that I can provide reassurance that waste exports from the UK are tightly regulated, and businesses must take all necessary steps to ensure that waste exported from the UK is managed in an environmentally sound way. The Environment Agency, as the enforcement body in England, works with our international partners to enforce compliance.
Recognising the particular challenge of flexible plastics, currently collected by fewer than 15% of English local authorities, we are requiring kerbside plastic-film collections from all households and workplaces by 31 March 2027. We have also provided financial support for the multimillion-pound FlexCollect project, which funded local authorities to roll out kerbside plastic film collection trials. This is an ambitious target, but no doubt we must meet it, if we are going to make progress on plastic recycling.
We have also worked with the Food Standards Agency to confirm that it will act as the competent authority for England, Wales and Northern Ireland—working with Food Standards Scotland—to establish an auditing programme for recycled plastic materials in contact with food, further upholding high-quality UK-recycled plastics.
In January 2025, we brought forward legislation to introduce a deposit return scheme for drinks containers in October 2027. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, asked whether the scheme is on track; it will come into fruition on that date. A new organisation called UK Deposit Management Organisation Ltd will run the scheme. Once the DRS is introduced, UK DMO will be required to collect at least 90% by year 3 of the scheme. International deposit return schemes have seen recycling rates increase to over 95%; this will transform the recycling of plastic bottles while reducing litter.
I recognise what the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, said about the ambition of the scheme and the length of time to make the progress we expect—I think he cited Germany. There is greater awareness of the need to recycle plastic bottles, and younger generations are more responsible on this. We are learning from the experience of Germany and others to ensure that we can meet the ambitious targets of this scheme in time—so watch this space.
These reforms are already stimulating investment. In February, the Environmental Services Association wrote to the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury outlining the certainty that pEPR has provided. As a result, its members plan to invest over £10 billion to improve recycling infrastructure over the next decade, creating over 25,000 jobs across the country. This is good news for that industry and for the economy more generally; these are homegrown, green jobs that will provide investment in communities and our environment.
The plastic packaging tax, set at £210.82 per tonne for packaging containing less than 30% recycled content, creates strong incentives for using recycled materials. At last year’s Budget, we announced support for a mass balance approach for chemically recycled plastic, recognising emerging technologies that can recycle a wider range of plastics. These measures form part of our broader vision for a circular economy. Our forthcoming plan for delivering a circular economy in England represents a fundamental reimagining of how we design, produce, use and recover materials right across the economy, including in the plastics and chemicals sector. I note the tremendous progress achieved through the UK Plastics Pact, supported by the Government and led by WRAP, which the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned. Since 2018, member organisations have increased average recycled content in packaging from 8.5% to 22% while reducing problematic single-use items by 55% by weight.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, spent some time on the subject of reuse. We are committed to transitioning to a circular economy, in which reusable packaging plays a vital part. There is already a strong incentive for reusable packaging through pEPR, as producers pay the disposal cost fees only the first time that reusable packaging is placed on the market. Each reuse cycle avoids additional charges, which creates a strong incentive for businesses to adopt reusable systems. At the end of life, reusable packaging can be offset against fees if collected and sent for recycling by the producer, which further reduces pEPR fees.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
Before the noble Lord moves on, I would understand if he wanted to write to me on this, but can he indicate what progress is being made at scale on reusables?
Lord Katz (Lab)
I was going to give some examples of schemes for reusables, although I might have to write on the details of the metrics. A good example of a reusable plastic cups scheme already operating in a closed environment setting is the one launched in 2023 at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, operated by Re-universe. Noble Lords may be familiar with it. A customer pays a deposit of £2 per cup for takeaway drinks and, when the cups are returned to designated bins—it is a vending machine-style facility—the deposit is refunded to the customer. The scheme has saved 400,000 single-use coffee cups from disposal since it was launched in 2023. Using these cups just three times renders them carbon negative compared to single-use alternatives. It has saved Blenheim Palace £45,000 annually by eliminating the need to purchase single-use cups.
More anecdotally, when I went to visit my club—Tottenham Hotspur—a couple of weekends ago, it was using a reusable cup scheme. Drinks are given out in plastic cups which are returned and can be washed and reused. It saves money and is good for the planet.
I have run over a little, but I shall endeavour to answer a couple of outstanding questions from the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, and the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, on the global plastics treaty. Although the meeting to discuss the treaty did not result in agreement on a treaty, the UK joined more than 80 countries in making clear the weight of support for an ambitious and effective treaty. The UK was one of 100 countries to support the global target to reduce the production of primary plastic polymers to sustainable numbers. Of course, the UK will continue to work with its partners in the High Ambition Coalition and other countries to reach an ambitious agreement at the next negotiating session.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
I neglected to say that I should congratulate the Defra officials—that is, the British team, under both the previous Government and this Government—on the superb job they have been doing on the UN treaty. We are regarded as one of the finest advocates for reducing plastic use, and that needs to be put on the record. We did a good job. The fact that we do not have a treaty is not the fault of any British Government or Defra officials.
Lord Katz (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for that; he has pre-empted my vote of thanks to the negotiating teams. I am glad about, and welcome, his recognition of our intent, the quality of the people involved and the thought we put into the negotiation process.
The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, touched on the issue of Camber Sands and bio-bead spills. This was obviously an awful event. As somebody who enjoys the natural environment of the south coast’s beaches as much as anyone, I thought it terrible to see the impact of this spill. The Government have supported industry-led initiatives such as Operation Clean Sweep to promote good practice in pellet loss prevention.
I cannot speak in more detail about the different kinds of sewage processing that the noble Baroness mentioned. If I recall correctly, a record level of investment from the water companies—around £100 billion—has been secured by Ofwat for the next period. That is exactly the sort of investment, in not just pipes but processing sewage, that will lead to the transition we want to see away from bio-beads and towards sludge.
We inherited years of underinvestment in recycling infrastructure, but the foundations are now firmly in place. Through simpler recycling, extending producer responsibility for packaging, the deposit return scheme and the plastic packaging tax, we have created a comprehensive framework that will drive substantial increases in plastic recycling rates while stimulating investment, creating jobs and supporting our transition to a circular economy. We are committed to ending the throwaway society, delivering on our plan for change and ensuring that Britain leads the world in sustainable resource management.