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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he plans to take to ensure that plastics used in disposable nappies are as biodegradable and as harmless to the environment as possible; and if he will make a statement.

The Government has committed in its 25 Year Environment Plan to eliminating all avoidable plastic waste. We will set out how we will achieve this in our upcoming Resources and Waste Strategy to be published later this year. The Strategy will set out the actions we will take to encourage producers to take more responsibility for the lifespan of their products and make sure these are more carefully designed with resource efficiency and waste prevention in mind, including making more use of recycled materials.

While biodegradable materials may be seen as a solution to reduce the impact of waste, they can also be more environmentally damaging than non-biodegradable materials if disposed of incorrectly. Plastics which claim to be biodegradable should carry a real advent stand. EN 13432 covers plastics which are compostable and will biodegrade in industrial composters. The Government published a report in 2015 which concluded that existing biodegradable standards are only applicable to very specific conditions, such as industrial composters.

The Government is concerned that, in the absence of standards, claims about the biodegradability of plastic-based products cannot be verified leading to potential confusion in the marketplace, possible increased levels of consumption and potential environmental harm at the point of disposal. As part of our forthcoming UK Bioeconomy Strategy we will work with industry to seek evidence on the demand, benefits and implications of a standard for bio-based and biodegradable plastics. We aim to publish the Bioeconomy Strategy this year.