Household Waste Recycling

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right that rates dropped by about 1.5% over the pandemic, as I think I said. I am not sure whether there are any incinerators planned at the moment but I will take her point away because I agree with it.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, the Government want to standardise household waste collection services throughout England, as the Minister said. Having moved from an area that collected—separated—nearly everything recyclable to one whose recyclable collection is pretty poor, I am frustrated to be told that I may have to wait two years for the collection to improve. Listening to the Government, however, I may have to wait 10 years for it to improve. Why are the Government dragging their feet?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

As I said, we passed provisions in the Environment Act that give us new powers to improve consistency and introduce both a deposit return scheme and an extended producer responsibility for packaging. All these measures require working with industry; we are consulting, and have consulted, on them and will bring them forward. The producer packaging measures will be brought forward in 2024.