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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that supermarkets are required to use packaging that is recyclable through household recycling systems; and whether she has considered taking legislative steps to promote the use of such packaging.

The Government is taking several steps to incentivise the use of use or recyclable packaging by supermarkets and other producers.

Under the UK wide Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging (pEPR) scheme, which came into effect on 1 January 2025, producers are incentivised to reduce their material footprint and use easier to recycle packaging by being required to bear the end-of-life costs associated with packaging that they place on the market. The Scheme Administrator, PackUK, can modulate (increase or decrease) the household packaging waste disposal fees for each category of packaging a producer supplies. This will reflect the environmental sustainability of the packaging and provide an incentive to the producer to use more environmentally sustainable packaging.

Additionally, under Simpler Recycling, every household and workplace (such as businesses, schools, and hospitals) across England will be able to recycle the same materials in the following core groups: metal; glass; plastic: paper and card; food waste; garden waste (household only). This includes cartons (as part of the plastics recyclable waste stream). More consistent collections will help reduce contamination, improve material quality and boost recycling rates.