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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the effect of the timescale to introduce a deposit return scheme on the amount of plastic waste the UK will export overseas by 2024.

In the Resources and Waste Strategy, we have committed to taking actions which will help to stimulate private investment in reprocessing and recycling infrastructure. The introduction of a Deposit Return Scheme for drinks containers, alongside the other Collection and Packaging Reforms (Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging (EPR) and consistency in household and business recycling in England), is expected to increase and incentivise appetite for commercial infrastructure investment, giving investors greater confidence in the growing UK reprocessing market and reducing the reliance on exporting material overseas. Alongside this, the HMT plastic packaging tax is expected to increase demand for secondary material plastic and increasing reprocessing infrastructure will help meet this demand.