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 is taking to address the problem of plastic waste at design and manufacture level.

The Government set out in the 25 Year Environment Plan, published in January last year, its commitment to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste and to reform the packaging producer responsibility system. Our Resources and Waste Strategy was published in December last year and contains details on how we will do this, including measures to incentivise packaging producers to make better, more sustainable decisions at the design stage and point of manufacture. Through reforming the current system we will require producers to fund the full net cost of managing the packaging they place on the market, once it becomes waste. We will strengthen the incentives of these reforms by also setting minimum ecodesign requirements.

Other measures set out in the Strategy, as well as in the Budget 2018, will lead to an increase in the supply and demand for secondary materials. These include the introduction of a deposit return scheme for drinks containers in England, introducing consistency in household and business recycling collections in England and a tax on plastic packaging with less than 30% recycled content, all subject to consultation. These measures will provide a strong incentive for producers to design and make plastic packaging that uses less virgin materials and is more easily recyclable.

The consultations setting out the Government’s proposals on the measures referred to above were published on 18 February this year and can be found at: consult.defra.gov.uk/environmental-quality/resource-and-waste-and-plastic-packaging-tax-consu-1.