Environmental Protection

Amanda Hack Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister’s commitment to bringing forward the deposit return scheme. In my constituency, we have a dedicated community of volunteer litter pickers who work tirelessly to ensure that our environment is free from litter. However, their job is never-ending.

A member of the Castle Donington Litter Wombles visited me recently to highlight the litter issue on the lay-bys of the A453 between Donington services and East Midlands Gateway. In her correspondence to me, she said,

“Wombles have litter picked these lay-bys numerous times—and we have picked over 1000 bags from these locations since 2021, but it’s just a thankless task and is extremely disheartening to see them full of litter again within a matter of days.”

Everyone in the Chamber will have a group of dedicated volunteers litter picking in their communities, and we owe a great deal of thanks to them. We need to act to help them reduce the level of litter locally, but we face a growing environmental crisis and there must be an end in sight.

Keep Britain Tidy has found that small plastic bottles and non-alcoholic cans make up 43% of all litter. Single-use plastic is polluting our communities. A lot of that plastic never reaches the recycling plant; it is dropped on the floor, put in the wrong bin or tossed out the window on the motorway. The Conservative Government promised a deposit return scheme for recycling bottles and consistently delayed its introduction, but when this Labour Government say we are committed to cleaning up our streets, parks, rivers and oceans, we mean it. The deposit return scheme will provide an incentive for people to keep our streets clean and will make us all conscious of the plastic we use.

When Germany implemented a scheme—gosh, a couple decades ago—it reported a 98% return rate, showing the potential we have here. Meanwhile, in this country, a National Highways survey last year found that 63% of people had seen somebody discarding litter out the window on the side of an A-road or motorway. That has a devastating impact on our wildlife: the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has received more than 10,000 reports of animals found injured, trapped or dead in discarded litter over the past three years.

Highways and busy roads are far too dangerous for our volunteers to venture on to, and they should not have to. Keeping our environment clean is a collective responsibility. We have to start at the source, and I am pleased that we have a Government who are finally taking action and delivering on our environmental commitments. Introducing the deposit return scheme will kick-start an economy-wide transformation in our relationship with the resources we use and on tackling waste, but it would be useful if the Minister outlined how convenience stores in rural constituencies such as mine will play their part and how they will ensure that all retailers can get involved in the scheme.

I am grateful to have a Government who recognise the need to encourage people to recycle, reduce their waste and make more sustainable choices, which will go a long way towards protecting and preserving our planet for this generation and those to come.