The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs () (Con):...I now turn to the
details of this instrument. These amendments to the regulations
will introduce enhanced sampling, recording and reporting
requirements for materials facilities and increase the type of
facilities in scope of the regulations. Materials facilities will
be in scope of the amended regulations if they receive and manage
at least 1,000 tonnes of household or household-type material a
year for the primary purpose of reuse and recycling. The sampling
requirements will include a higher input sampling frequency and
more material categories for facilities to sample and report
against. Materials facilities will also need to separately
measure, record and report against packaging and Deposit
return scheme material proportions. This data will
support packaging composition calculations or exemptions under
EPR. The enhanced recording and reporting requirements will
require materials facilities to provide more information on waste
suppliers and samples taken, as well as to report all raw data to
regulators to support improved analysis.
To give an example of this in practice, my local council, West
Berkshire, contracts Veolia, a waste management company, to
perform household waste collections. When a Veolia truck picks up
household waste and delivers it to a materials facility for reuse
and recycling, that facility will sample the waste so that we
know how much of it is EPR packaging material and how much is
newspapers and magazines, Deposit
return containers, contamination or other non-packaging
materials. The waste collected by Veolia from neighbouring
councils or from its own commercial contracts with businesses
would be sampled separately. This will help ensure that the EPR
payments to my local council reflect the quality and quantity of
packaging materials collected from households. This will provide
valuable new information to help my local council optimise waste
collection operations and, through EPR payments, provide a new
means to incentivise councils to improve performance and ensure
that producers get good value for money...
(Lab):...A key justification for this instrument is that new data
will improve quality monitoring and the consistency of recycling
collections. There remain, however, substantial differences
between recycling collections across different parts of the
country, and we know that work on new schemes, including
the Deposit
return scheme for plastic bottles, is behind
schedule. Given the complexity, why have these workstreams not
been given greater priority?
:...Both noble Baronesses raised
the question of Deposit
return schemes. Noble Lords will be aware that we
want to try to align our Deposit
return scheme across the United Kingdom, if
possible. That has required us to talk closely to Scotland—which
has, frankly, messed it up—and we now seem to be in a position to
take forward, by some point in 2025, an effective and
meaningful Deposit
return scheme that will deliver a massive
environmental benefit. I am reminded that the plastic bag levy
has seen a reduction in the use of plastic bags of more than 95%.
We think that a properly structured Deposit
return scheme should have only a marginal inflationary
effect and should incentivise people to be part of a scheme that
will see a dramatic reduction in waste...
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