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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will hold further discussions with representatives of the food and drink industry to help ensure the creation of an end-to-end circular economy in packaging recycling.

We continue our engagement with representatives of the food and drink industry, alongside others, in ensuring industry is prepared ahead of the EPR requirements coming into force. This includes a dedicated fortnightly Business Readiness Forum to update industry and answer questions plus a programme of webinars to deep-dive into specific issues and themes. Among the hundreds of stakeholders from the food and drink industry that have so far taken part in this engagement, and will continue to do so, are trade associations (and their members) such as the Food and Drink Federation, the British Soft Drinks Association and the British Retail Consortium.

Additionally, we have initiated an eight-week visioning sprint programme incorporating over 75 representatives from across the different sectors impacted by EPR to work with us to create a vision for what an EPR scheme will look like in 10 years’ time with a view to creating an end-to-end circular economy in packaging and recycling.