Asked by
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they intend to take to
reduce substantially the use of single-use plastics.
The Minister of State, Department for the Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs, Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Department for
International Development () (Con)
My Lords, we have reduced annual sales of single-use plastic
carrier bags by over 7 billion with the 5p charge. We launched
the ground-breaking Commonwealth Clean Ocean Alliance alongside
it. From April, there will be a ban on the supply of plastic
straws, cotton buds and stirrers, while our landmark Environment
Bill will shift the emphasis towards producer responsibility. It
includes powers to charge for single-use plastic items, introduce
deposit return schemes and manage the export of plastic waste.
(GP)
I thank the Minister for his Answer. He will be aware that
dealing with litter and fly-tipping costs councils £660 per
person per year, and that local councils spend 32% of their
council tax revenue on dealing with waste. Does he agree that
this cost should be borne not by people in communities but by the
people benefiting from it? He may be aware that in the United
States, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act has just been
tabled in the Congress, which calls for industry to meet those
costs. Even better, since this plastic is choking our planet,
should we not ban it altogether?
The plastic bag tax itself has not put any additional costs on to
local authorities; on the contrary, it has raised substantial
funds, which have been deployed through local charities in the
areas where it has been collected. On the broader point about the
cost of tackling unnecessary or avoidable waste, that is central
to what we are trying to achieve in the Environment Bill. Taking
the Bill in its totality, it is about shifting the emphasis away
from consumer responsibility towards producer responsibility, on
the understanding that most consumers do not welcome unnecessary
waste from the products that they buy.
(CB)
My Lords, further to the noble Baroness’s question about banning
plastics altogether, at the moment the supermarkets seem to be
having their cake and eating it. They are charging us for our
plastic bags but not all of that money is going to charity. Some
of it is being kept by the supermarkets. Furthermore, they have
developed a very tidy line in bags for life. I gather from a
recent report that, on average, every family in England has 54 of
these bags, which are made of much tougher plastics. On top of
that, can the Government not use this year to come up with some
systematic, countrywide system to tell people what to do with
their plastics—which is which and how to dispose of them? It is a
total muddle.
There is no doubt that there has been an upsurge in the use of
so-called bags for life, but the net impact of the plastic bag
tax has unquestionably been superb for those interested in
reducing unnecessary plastic waste. The noble Baroness’s second
point, about the ease of recycling, is absolutely right. In the
Environment Bill, which has been introduced in the other place
and will be here later in the year, we commit to making recycling
easier and ensuring a more consistent, comprehensive service
right across the country to avoid exactly that confusion, which
exists from local authority to local authority. The Bill
introduces legislation requiring all local authorities to collect
a core set of recyclable materials—plastic bottles, plastic pots,
tubs and trays, glass, metal, paper and card, food and garden
waste—from households and businesses in England from 2023.
(Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that, if we concentrate on
single-use plastics, there is a danger that manufacturers will
just switch to other materials that are not much better in terms
of their impact on the environment? Should we not be challenging
the whole concept of “single use” and tackling the throwaway
society? This requires a much bigger change in mentality than
simply, item by item, banning the use of particular materials.
The noble Baroness is right. I make one point about the plastic
bag tax. It is often argued that the paper bag alternative is,
from a carbon point of view, not necessarily an improvement, but
if you look at its environmental impact, there is no doubt that
the paper bag is vastly superior to the plastic bag, which can
last in the environment, breaking up slowly over anything up to
1,000 years. Paper, of course, decomposes very quickly. If you
judge things only through the lens of carbon, perhaps single-use
plastic bags might be better than paper bags, but that would be
fundamentally the wrong approach to take. I agree with the noble
Baroness on the broader point; the Environment Bill is designed
to take us to a place where we reduce unnecessary single-use
plastic bags consistent with the 25-year plan launched a couple
of years ago by the former Prime Minister. Our emphasis on
extended producer responsibility is essential and, in effect,
means that producers will have to take financial responsibility
for the lifetime costs of dealing with whatever they create.
(Con)
Further to my noble friend’s comments welcoming the success of
the plastic bag charge where it has been imposed on large
retailers, can he indicate when that same charge will finally be
imposed on small and medium-sized retailers, which even the
Government’s figures indicate would result in a massive drop in
the unnecessary use of plastic bags?
My noble friend makes a very good point. At the risk of
triggering a groan in the House, I am afraid that I can tell him
only that, having consulted on extending the charge to all
retailers and upping it to 10p—something the Government are very
serious about—we will be taking the next step as soon as
possible.
(LD)
My Lords, in 2018, the Government promised to review the waste
prevention programme. If, as the Minister says, the Government
are so serious about prioritising waste reduction, why has that
not yet happened?
I think the Government’s record on tackling plastic is pretty
robust. We have, for example, world-leading legislation on
tackling microbeads. The many billions of microbeads that would
have ended up in the environment, particularly the marine
environment, will not, as a consequence of the steps we have
taken. I have already mentioned the plastic bag tax, and there
are numerous other bans on the way in relation to plastic
stirrers and spoons and so on. It is unfair to describe the
Government’s progress as slow. However, when it comes to things
such as extended producer responsibility, they cannot just be
invented overnight. It is much more complex and requires us to
look at the whole life cycle of individual products. We are
working hard to develop the right answers but it is important
that, when we introduce them, they are the right answers.
(Lab)
There has been a significant, if perhaps small, increase in the
use of compostable substitutes for plastic packaging. What
assessment has been made of the genuine efficacy of these
materials as far as composting is concerned? What percentage of
packaging do we now think is being provided from these materials?
The noble Baroness makes a very important point. The problem here
is that, quite often, when plastic is sold or marketed as
biodegradable, it is not; it simply breaks down into smaller bits
of plastic and causes problems further down the food chain and,
like much of it, ends up in the oceans. The second problem is
that, even where it is biodegradable, if it ends up the recycling
stream it can have a very damaging impact on the quality of the
recyclate. We believe, however, that biodegradable plastics have
an increasingly important role. We published a call for evidence
last year to help us consider the development of standards or
certification criteria for genuine bio-based, biodegradable and
compostable plastics. We are looking at the responses at the
moment and will publish a response very soon.
