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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what alternatives his Department is considering to weight-based recycling.

Weight based targets have been helpful in increasing action on recycling and continue to play a valuable role as a measure of performance nationally and locally. However, on their own they can lead to a perverse focus on the weight of materials recycled rather than, for example, overall life cycle benefits or resource efficiency and waste prevention.

The UK Government has long argued for alternative performance indicators and leaving the EU provides an opportunity to develop these possibilities and to broaden or shift the focus of performance to make sure that resources are used more efficiently and kept in use for longer, to minimise waste and reduce its environmental impacts by promoting reuse, remanufacturing and recycling. The 25 Year Environment Plan commits us to meeting existing waste targets and to developing ambitious new future targets and milestones for recycling. We will be exploring these as part of our resources and waste strategy, to be published later this year.