Schools: Great British September Clean

Debate between Baroness Verma and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Thursday 24th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

Increasingly, many schools put emphasis on an environmental component of the curriculum. I have spoken at hundreds of schools, and I am yet to visit one where the environment is not a major focus. What is useful in the approach of most schools today is that they weave this issue through existing curricula. In addition, the Government have been ramping up our support for national clean-up days, and we have been proud to support and endorse many of those events. This month, for instance, we are encouraging as many people in business as possible to participate in the Great British September Clean and the Great British Beach Clean, and we anticipate that numerous young people will join in those events—and, we hope, become lifelong environmentalists.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

Will my noble friend also work with small businesses in the fast food industry to ensure that they have bins available so that people, particularly young people going out for lunches, can bin their rubbish after their meals?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

The noble Baroness makes an important point. We believe fundamentally that businesses should try to reduce the amount of litter that their products generate. The litter strategy sets out how we intend to work with the relevant industries to tackle certain types of particularly problematic litter, including, of course, fast food packaging. Councils do have powers to tackle persistent unreasonable behaviour, and, through the Environment Bill, we will increase those powers.