Packaging Manufacturers: Extended Producer Responsibility
Debate between Sarah Champion and Mary Creagh(1 day, 23 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)
It is a pleasure to speak on this issue today. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for securing this debate, and I thank all hon. Members who have spoken. We have heard from powerful advocates for the glass industry, the fibre-based composites industry, the ceramics industry, the wine industry in Cornwall and, of course, the beer and pub industry, which we are all hoping to go and enjoy shortly.
Let me begin by also declaring my interest as a member of the GMB trade union. I recognise the challenging context in which the glass industry operates; that is a result of a range of global pressures, including the international increases in energy costs, volatile commodity prices, growing international competition, and substantial investment in decarbonising energy-intensive manufacturing processes. I also recognise and acknowledge the industry’s concerns about packaging extended producer responsibility, or PEPR, which is an internationally recognised model used in more than 30 countries to transform recycling services. The model shifts the cost of managing packaging waste from taxpayers—that is us—to the producers who put it on the market. It is the “polluter pays” principle in action. Its introduction in this country is the biggest change to recycling policy in 25 years.
The policy was formulated under the previous Conservative Government. The right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) is no longer in his place, but it was his Government who first began developing it back in 2018-19. There was a debate on it on the Floor of the House, in which he did not register his objections, and he did not vote against it. Perhaps he was absent, or chatting to his new friends in a different party.
Since PEPR has been brought in, the money raised from packaging producers and retailers has gone directly to councils to fund the introduction of simpler recycling—the new recycling collections that we have. That does not include the food waste collections, although they are part of simpler recycling. Last year, PEPR raised over £1.4 billion for local authorities to deliver better recycling services for people in every nation of the UK. Our goal is to get from 45% recycled—that is where we have stagnated over the last decade—to 65% recycled by 2035. That is an important goal. The food waste collections—they are not paid for through PEPR—are part of the simpler recycling reforms and a really important part of taking the methane out of our bins.
Let me come to glass fees. Last year, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham rightly said, year 1 PEPR fees took account only of the weight and volume of materials. That reflected the cost to local authorities of collecting and disposing of the materials. Following her excellent Westminster Hall debate last year, we have worked at pace, and I am pleased to tell hon. Members that from this year—year 2—we are bringing in lower fees for more recyclable packaging.
Our latest data shows that more than 93% of glass will receive a “green” discount for being recyclable. This means that producers of harder-to-recycle “red” materials, such as crisp packets, will pay a premium. The system is designed to reward the right choices. The incentive to make the right choices will increase, because in years 3 and 4, producers of “red” materials—the more complex forms of packaging—will pay even higher fee rates than those do who use more recyclable, “green” materials, like glass. The forecasts that I have seen expect the glass sector to pay a decreasing share of PEPR costs in years 2 and 3. In year 4, that will fall even further, as the penalty for “red” packaging will reach double the basic “green” rate.
Sarah Champion
Can the Minister tell us whether that will be the 75% discount that the glass industry is asking for? Does she know what the falling rates will be, please?
Mary Creagh
Again, we have a complex system. I would very much like to give my hon. Friend the amounts per tonne, but that is not possible, much though I would like to give her comfort, until all packaging producers have reported their data in the autumn. We will then issue the invoices. I can say that the proportion that the glass sector will pay will fall year on year. We have been listening very carefully to the glass industry on that issue. PackUK, the scheme administrator, and officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs meet the glass sector and British Glass regularly, and PackUK ran a workshop just this week, which included British Glass, on how we can drive the use of more recyclable materials.
Everything that PackUK does is subject to four-nation agreement. We had a meeting this morning with the devolved Governments, at which we talked through some of the issues. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland face very different challenges, and the challenges of collecting in inner-city London are not comparable to those of collecting waste in the Outer Hebrides. The model is therefore complex from the recycling and collections point of view as well.
Returning to glass, PackUK and DEFRA officials will visit Ardagh Glass later this month. The visit was due to take place in June, but it was rescheduled at Ardagh’s request. PackUK also visited Encirc in Northern Ireland last month. I have spoken to the hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin) about the issue around the reduction in energy fees, but those do not apply in Northern Ireland. That is another—well, we could talk about Brexit, but perhaps we will not intrude on that private pain.
May I also say that since we debated glass fees last year, DEFRA officials have visited five of the six major glass manufacturers in the UK to hear from them directly, and that includes Beatson Clark? We are acting on their concerns. Also, we have investment in the glass industry in this country; we have a new electric glass factory at Verallia in Leeds.
Mary Creagh
I want to make a little bit of progress, if I may, because it is four minutes to kick-off.
Mary Creagh
I want to make some progress, and my hon. Friend may find that I answer her questions.
PackUK has today published improved guidance on how recyclability will be assessed and rewarded. The glass section was developed in close collaboration with the glass industry and we have already received positive feedback. I hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) said about wool. When I see wool used as a coolant, it tends to come in plastic packaging, for hygiene reasons. That packaging can certainly be open up, and the wool can then be composted, but there is usually a film around it, and under the recyclability assessment methodology, that would incur higher fees. All this is meant to incentivise design for recyclability. I was due to meet a wool insulation provider this week. Sadly, I was not able to, but she was on her way down, and I believe that she met officials. I will check that later. I am keen to do work on this issue, because it is particularly important for the British wool industry, with wool at such rock-bottom prices.
We are planning to launch a call for evidence this year to gather industry views, which will inform how we continue to reward the right choices. On the post-implementation review, it will be conducted and published in the normal way, three years after the regulations came in. That is slated for December 2028.
Sarah Champion
It is reassuring that we are going to have the consultation. Would it not have been much better to have had it before the scheme was implemented? The Minister mentioned a meeting with my constituency business, Beatson Clark. That meeting only happened because I urged the previous Secretary of State and the Minister to make it happen, and I assume that the other examples of meetings that have taken place, or not, have been at the insistence of MPs. Why was that work not done before the scheme was rolled out?
Mary Creagh
I cannot speak for what happened under the previous Administration, but I can tell my hon. Friend that the scheme was announced in 2018, and a consultation happened in 2019. There was another consultation, but I cannot find the exact part of my pack on that. There was a full impact assessment of PEPR published in October 2020, setting out the expected overall costs to businesses. At that stage, it was not possible to assess the impact on specific sectors or regions, as fees and modulation had not been finalised. This has been a huge infrastructure project change, and a huge system change. The Environment Agency, acting as the regulator, holds the database of everyone who is a packaging producer. Elsewhere in the waste and packaging sector, we see large issues around avoidance, free riding and other issues, so we had to go through a massive piece of work with our regulator to ensure that everyone who is putting packaging on is meeting their obligations.
There were public consultations in 2019 and 202,1 and a consultation on draft regulations in 2023. There was a consultation with British Glass on the decision to use volume in the apportionment of kerbside recycling collection costs in July 2024, prior to the release of the initial set of illustrative base fees. I think that there was perhaps a misunderstanding, given that this had all been thought about and discussed for five or six years, that it was never going to happen. To be fair to the smaller companies, perhaps they were unaware of their obligations, or perhaps they were not obligated at that time, but have since grown and been brought over the de minimis threshold.
Let me talk a little bit more about what the Government are doing more widely to support glass businesses with their electricity costs.
Glass Packaging: Extended Producer Responsibility
Debate between Sarah Champion and Mary Creagh(1 year, 1 month ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)
I am grateful for that guidance, Mr Stringer. I did not do that last week, so the Clerks have clearly made a mark against my name. I will do my best, and I have my team on standby to yank me down, as I am sure you will do. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for asking for this debate. She has been a doughty supporter of Beatson Clark in her constituency and of the glass industry in general. I also thank hon. Members from across the parties who have made valuable points today.
The aim of the reforms is to create a more circular and resource-efficient economy. They are the biggest reforms in a generation. The three elements—simpler recycling, DRS and extended producer responsibility for packaging—will turn the dial on recycling rates, which, as the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Dr Hudson) said, have stagnated over the past 15 years and are bumping along at 42% to 44%. Assessments show that getting our household recycling rate up to 65% over the next 10 years will drive £10 billion of new investment in the British economy and create 21,000 new jobs.
Mary Creagh
I will make some progress and then give way.
UK circular industries—those that keep products and materials in circulation for as long as possible—currently deliver £67 billion a year to the economy, up from £44 billion in 2008, and provide 827,000 jobs. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer) talked about the innovators in her constituency creating new packaging. I will take away the point about weights and measures and see what we can do in a cross-ministerial way.
Mary Creagh
I will give time at the end but I want to make some progress.
The annual growth rate of circular industries is 3%, more than double the UK’s overall growth rate of 1.2%. Extended producer responsibility for packaging—pEPR—moves recycling costs from taxpayers to packaging producers. Think about it: not everybody drinks and not everybody shops online, but we are all paying for the costs of collection. We have had a great tour of drinking places, hostelries and amazing producers, but at the moment everybody in the country is paying for that, through council tax and general taxation. These reforms are creating systematic change, and that is hard.
Simpler recycling in England will make recycling easier and consistent. People will be able to recycle the same materials, including glass, whether they are at home, work or school, which will create a step change in the quality and quantity of recyclate streams. That is enabled by pEPR, which will pay for the new costs associated with the change, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) mentioned.
We are also introducing deposit return schemes in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland that add refundable deposits to single-use plastic, steel and aluminium containers. I discussed this with my colleague in Northern Ireland last week at the British-Irish Council environment ministerial meeting at Kew Gardens. We had a two-hour debate about how we would co-operate on the circular economy, in particular looking at the challenges of Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man—island economies with no real reprocessing facilities—and what we can all learn from each other.
Global Deforestation
Debate between Sarah Champion and Mary Creagh(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Mary Creagh
I am afraid I have absolutely no idea; I will have to write to my hon. Friend. That is genuinely not my area.
We welcome the positive conclusions to the COP in Rome. The key outcome is the launch of the Cali fund, which will drive benefit sharing from the use of DSI—digital sequence information—on genetic resources, allowing companies using this information to direct funds towards indigenous people and local communities who safeguard biodiversity. At the biodiversity COP, for the first time we created the process by which IPLCs now have a seat at the table, which is very important.
My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd) mentioned the UK-Indonesia joint energy transition. As I have said, we will continue to work with key partners, including Indonesia and China, on the stocktake that supports the objective of halting and reversing forest loss by 2030. Future ICF is subject to business planning this year and to the spending review from next year. I am meeting the Minister for International Development this afternoon to discuss our approach on that; this is all work that is happening at the moment.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a particularly important region, but it has received less attention and less climate finance than the Amazon and south-east Asia. We are committed to working with others to secure the next phase of support, which will be announced at COP30, for the forests, people and biodiversity of the Congo basin countries. That will sit alongside the pledge for IPLCs’ land tenure. We know that communities are better able to protect ecosystems when their land rights are secure, and that areas managed by IPLCs are better protected than any other areas. The Foreign Secretary has already announced that the UK will lead on this IPLC land tenure pledge.
Sarah Champion
Will the Minister be covering the regulations on due diligence and when they will be published?
Mary Creagh
I am coming to that. Legislation complements the measures I have described. The UK timber regs aim to eliminate demand for illegally harvested timber, and the EU’s timber regulation continues to apply, unamended, in Northern Ireland. Both regs require operators that place timber on the market to implement due diligence and review their supply chains, and a recent review of the UK timber regulations demonstrated that they have led to a reduction of illegal timber in UK supply chains.
Over the past 12 years, our delivery partner, the Office for Product Safety and Standards—which, again, is part of the Department for Business and Trade, so not my area—has reviewed the due diligence systems of more than 600 businesses and issued 100 warning letters and 100 notices of remedial action. Recent notable enforcement by OPSS includes the prosecution of luxury yacht maker Sunseeker International, which received a fine of £360,000 plus prosecution costs in relation to illegal imports of timber from Myanmar and Africa.
At home, the Government must also abide by the rules we have made. The Government’s timber procurement policy requires all Government procurers and suppliers to prove the legality and sustainability of timber. We will only accept sustainable timber, and we have a wider approach to encouraging legal and sustainable forestry domestically and internationally. We are currently reviewing the timber procurement policy, with the aim of securing better recognition of British certification schemes such as Grown in Britain and FLEGT—forest law enforcement governance and trade—licensed timber.
We are at a critical moment for forests, and the international community must go further and faster to deliver our ambition. We need to tackle nature loss and enhance planetary stewardship. We are working to unlock more finance for nature, promote deforestation-free agriculture and reform global supply chains. Supporting indigenous rights and access to finance are also vital, and require targeted efforts across all tropical forest basins.
COP30 in Brazil, home to the world’s largest rainforest, will be a pivotal moment. We are working closely with Brazil and other partners to ensure that forests and nature take centre stage. We are partnering with Guyana as co-chairs of the forest and climate leaders’ partnership to build a valuable forum for driving wider ambition.
Agricultural expansion, particularly for a few key commodities, is the primary driver of illegal deforestation worldwide. As colleagues have said, the Environment Act made provision for the Government to bring forward legislation to exclude commodities. We recognise the urgency of the task to ensure that UK consumption of those commodities—
Environmental Protection
Debate between Sarah Champion and Mary Creagh(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
I am very proud that Beatson Clark manufactures glass right in the heart of my constituency and has done so for 270 years; it employs 200 people directly and a further 2,000 in the supply chain. Glass can be recycled almost infinitely. Currently, almost 74% of glass is recycled, and 80% of that comes from kerbside collections. I recently met representatives of Beaston Clark and British Glass, and they all expressed grave concerns about the impact of this Government’s current policies on the glass sector. DEFRA’s latest figures show that the number of glass containers placed on the market in 2024 was 23% lower than earlier estimates.
With increased pressure from imported glass, the outlook for UK manufacturers is indeed grim. UK glass manufacturers are already under severe pressure. The failure to introduce tariffs on imported glass, predominantly from Turkey, has left the industry facing punishing competition from overseas producers, who have significantly lower energy costs and no carbon charges. Although the move towards a circular economy as part of environmental improvements is laudable, it will ultimately be futile if the outcome is dependent on foreign imports, with no environmental impact mitigations in place. Can the Minister confirm whether imported glass will face the same EPR, and who will be liable to pay it?
Mary Creagh
My hon. Friend raised this issue with me prior to the debate. I have checked with my officials, and I am happy to confirm that the person who places the product—regardless of whether it is made in the UK or purchased from abroad—on the market will be responsible for paying the EPR fees on glass bottles.
Sarah Champion
I rise happier than when I sat down. I thank the Minister for clarifying that.
The sector has legitimate concerns that the DRS will lead to poor environmental outcomes, with less recycled glass going back for remelt, as it will likely be crushed in the process, thus rendering it unsuitable for its purpose. The DRS could also cause storage and safety issues for both consumers and retailers, especially smaller shops. The Republic of Ireland did not include glass in its scheme. It is important to point out that the DRS is not a reuse scheme; it is a collection scheme. Many people reminisce about the UK’s old deposit scheme, but that was a deposit refill scheme, which is completely different from the proposed DRS.
Wales has achieved a 90% glass collection rate from kerbside collections without the need for DRS, and is ranked second in the world for recycling. Following the Welsh Government’s recent announcement that they will withdraw from the four-nations DRS and re-examine its scope, it seems to me and many others that the scheme will be ineffective across the UK. Will the Minister tell us what consideration has been given to the Welsh blueprint for collection, which would be the simplest way to improve recycling rates? Given that local authorities receive money from the extended producer responsibility, it is a shame that the Government are not encouraging them to use it to improve collection quality.
The glass sector supports the principle behind the extended producer responsibility, but it sees the excessively high EPR fees on glass packaging as punishment for speaking out. The arrangement in Germany is often cited, including by DEFRA, as a good example of an EPR scheme, yet its glass fee is more than 10 times lower than the UK’s, at €28 per tonne. According to the indicative figures recently announced by DEFRA, the fee will be £240 per tonne in the UK.
In my discussions with the Minister last Monday, she confirmed that the final EPR figures were unlikely to be finalised until June. How is a business meant to budget on that basis? I urge her to take a serious look at the indicative figures to see if they can be reduced dramatically; otherwise, we will lose the most recyclable sector. Currently, per unit, glass is facing significantly higher fees than less recyclable, less circular materials. That goes against everything that other Government policies are trying to achieve, and I ask the Minister if they are really confident that the EPR policy and other waste policies will lead to more recyclable packaging in the UK.
Further, the delay to the DRS means that there is a two-and-a-half-year period when glass beverage containers will be paying EPR fees while competing beverage containers will not, due to being in the DRS. Put bluntly, this Government are driving businesses towards less recyclable packaging such as plastic in those two and a half years. It was never intended that EPR would be in place before the DRS, and this leaves glass at a huge competitive disadvantage in the beverage market, which makes up 80% of the glass market. Given the history and the uncertainty that still exists around the DRS, it is vital that all materials pay EPR fees until the DRS is fully functional, to create a level playing field for all beverage packaging. There is a backstop for 2028, but can I ask the Minister to clarify whether the backstop fees will be backdated to April this year when EPR launches?