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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many (a) wet wipes, (b) tampon applicators, (c) tobacco filters, (d) sachets and (e) single-use cups containing plastic were sold in England in each year since 2010.

(a) Research by Valpak to inform the Government consultation on the proposed ban of wet wipes containing plastic estimated that 24-32bn wet wipes were sold in the UK each year over the last 10 years. The research was not able to identify the exact proportion of wet wipes sold that contain plastic. However, it found that only 16% of wet wipes were explicitly labelled as plastic free in 2021. The consultation launched on 14 October 2023 and aims to gather more information on this.

(b) Defra does not collect information on the sale of tampons, including those with applicators containing plastic.

(c) Defra does not collect information on the sale of tobacco filters, including those containing plastic.

(d) Defra does not collect information on the sale of sachets, including those containing plastic.

(e) Research by the Waste and Resources Action Programme estimated that approximately 3.2 billion (+/- 9%) fibre-based composite cups and 1.0 billion (+/- 9%) plastic cups were placed onto the UK market in 2019.