Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
Main Page: Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party - Life peer)Plastic Recycling Targets
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts
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?
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.