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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of adding blister packs to the list of waste that must be collected by waste collectors; and what consideration she has made of the potential merits of amending recycling policy to include blister packs in kerbside collection.

Following support at public consultation, the Environment Act 2021 introduced new requirements for all local authorities in England to make arrangements for a core set of materials to be collected for recycling from all households: paper and card; plastic; glass; metal; food waste and garden waste. In 2021 we consulted on the detail of this policy, including implementation dates and materials in scope of collection.

Blister packs are difficult to recycle owing to the mix of different materials they are made from and, as such, tend not to be collected through kerbside recycling services. Take-back recycling schemes, such as the Terracycle scheme, can accept more complex packaging materials at dedicated recycling facilities.

Where blister packs are separately collected by producers through takeback schemes and then recycled at the producer’s cost, producers would not need to pay packaging Extended Producer Responsibility fees on the tonnage recycled.