Take-away Food: Litter

(asked on 3rd March 2021) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent discussions he has had with the takeaway food industry on littering.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 12th March 2021

The Litter Strategy sets out how we intend to work with the relevant industries to tackle certain types of problematic litter, including fast-food packaging.

To this effect, I held a roundtable in September 2020 with large fast-food retailers to understand what action they are taking now to tackle the litter created by their products. It was encouraging to hear about the initiatives they are working on and, more importantly, that they are committed to delivering lasting change by working together to tackle what is an industry wide issue. We are watching closely to see how this commitment translates into action in due course.

We believe that businesses should try to reduce the amount of litter their products generate. Through our reforms to packaging producer responsibility, we aim to reduce the amount of fast-food packaging that is littered and increase the amount of ‘on-the-go’ packaging that is recycled or reused. We will continue to engage with the takeaway food industry on these reforms.

Following responses from our 2019 consultation on Extended Producer Responsibility, we will seek views on policy proposals relating to littered packaging, such as takeaway food packaging, in our forthcoming consultation this spring.

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