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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate her department has made of the cost to local authorities of separating and incinerating waste upholstered domestic seating due to the presence of chemical flame retardants.

The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), to which the UK is party, requires that waste containing POPs above certain thresholds be destroyed, rather than landfilled. Research by the Environment Agency (EA) in 2021 revealed that waste upholstered domestic seating contains POP flame retardant chemicals above the legal thresholds. Local authorities are responsible for managing this waste in accordance with legal requirements, and they would hold information on their costs of doing so.