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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what additional cross-Departmental steps he is taking to incentivise businesses to reduce waste.

This Government has a bold and wide-ranging programme to help businesses cut the waste they produce, to recycle more and to ensure the environmental consequences of waste are minimised.

We recently published our plans for Extended Producer Responsibility on packaging, which will be introduced from 2024. We have consulted on a Deposit Return Scheme for drinks containers with the response due shortly. We have introduced a plastic packaging tax of £200/tonne on plastic packaging that doesn’t contain at least 30% recycled content and are consulting on a target under the Environment Act to cut residual waste by 50% by 2042. This follows on from restrictions on single use plastics, including carrier bags, where we have also proposed going further still. We also work to help reduce food waste, supporting the Courtauld Commitment which works for a more sustainable supply chain tackling food waste, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and water use and aims to halve food waste by 2030.