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

To ask His Majesty's Government whether there has been any increase in the volume of plastic and polystyrene pollution washed up on the UK’s beaches (1) in the last 12 months, and (2) over the last five years; and what steps they have taken, together with international partners, to mark World Ocean Day on 8 June, particularly with regard to tackling plastic waste in the world’s oceans.

The UK Government funds the Marine Conservation Society to record litter from sections of our coast which helps us monitor the levels and trends of plastic pollution. We monitor the current status of beach litter abundance over a three-year period for data reliability, so we cannot provide an accurate trend for the last 12 months. Over the last five years, the total litter count on British beaches has decreased by approximately 7 items / 100m per year. However, we know that plastic and polystyrene fragments are the most commonly found items, with an average of 45.5 pieces found on every 100m of coastline for the period 2020 – 2022. This data is used in combination with other monitoring data to measure the impact of our policies and inform our decisions about how to tackle marine litter.

We have already banned microbeads in rinse-off personal care products, reduced the use of single-use carrier bags, and restricted the supply of plastic straws and plastic-stemmed cotton buds and banned the supply of plastic drink stirrers. From October 2023, we will ban the supply of certain types of polystyrene food and drink containers, single-use plastic cutlery, single-use plastic balloon sticks and ban the supply of single-use plastic plates, bowls and trays to the end user, working towards our ambition to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste by 2042.

We are also playing our part internationally. One of four themes of our £500m Blue Planet Fund, launched in 2021 to support developing countries protect and enhance the marine environment and reduce poverty, is to tackle marine pollution and litter. Under this fund we're supporting countries to accelerate the transition towards more inclusive circular economies, working with the Global Plastic Action Partnership to establish diverse, multistakeholder platforms across the world, and we’ve supported over 500,000 young people worldwide to become leaders in the fight against plastic pollution through the Tide Turners Plastic Challenge. UK ODA funding has also supported several waste management projects including in Fiji where the local partner is working with private sector businesses on the only international standard landfill in the South Pacific. This aims to ensure 80% of waste is recycled and put back into the circular economy and includes development of a new sanitary landfill to improve waste collection and prevent harmful pollutants that are detrimental to Fijian mangroves and coral reefs entering these ecosystems.

On World Ocean Day Defra hosted leaders from the private sector for a roundtable on investment strategies and opportunities for a thriving sustainable blue economy. It showcased the Global Fund for Coral Reefs (GFCR) to investors, financial institutions, corporations and philanthropies as a commercially viable and scalable investment opportunity for the ocean, reefs, and climate-vulnerable communities. Since first contributing to the GFCR in 2021, the UK has maintained its position as the largest public donor with our total commitment now £33m from the UK’s Blue Planet Fund programme.