Plastic Recycling Targets

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2025 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in achieving plastic recycling targets.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, since the resources and waste strategy of 2018 and the 25-year environment plan of January 2019, plastic recycling has moved up the political and public agenda—but not as quickly as it might, despite the sterling efforts of David Attenborough. I am grateful to the Green Alliance for its briefing.

Over the intervening years, the banning of some plastic-containing products has helped. However, this is a small piece of the problem. Previous television coverage of UK plastic export strategy showed waste being sent abroad on barges to Turkey, with children playing among toxic waste. This created public outcry, but the practice is ongoing. Earlier this year, an investigation found that 200 young people had died in Turkey’s recycling industry. The EU is introducing a total ban on exporting waste to non-OECD countries up to 2029 and strict limits on plastic exports to other OECD countries. Meanwhile, the UK gaily continues to export waste plastics.

Figures from July show that plastic packaging had decreased from 2.6 million tonnes in 2012 to 2.3 million tonnes in 2024—a small reduction. Figures achieved for recycling increased from 25.2% in 2012 to 51% in 2025—a better, but misleading, figure. In April 2024, a survey conducted by Greenpeace and Everyday Plastic estimated that UK households discard approximately 1.7 billion pieces of plastic weekly, which is around 60 pieces per household. We are up to our necks in plastic. Snack packaging and fruit and vegetable packaging are the items most responsible. Some 58% of plastic packaging thrown away was being incinerated, an increase from 46% in 2022.

This is nothing to be proud of. Raising awareness with the public is crucial to future success in reducing discarded plastic in our environment. Analysis published in October 2023 by WRAP, a brilliant organisation dedicated to reducing plastic waste, noted that local authority collection rates for plastic were improving, with 6.1 million tonnes of plastic packaging collected for recycling in 2021, a 4% increase on the previous year. I stress that local authority plastic waste collection is not the same as plastic waste recycling; they are two very different things.

Figures from 2019 indicate that 16.6% of the material that sorting facilities dealt with was contaminated. This means it was unsuitable for recycling. Local authorities up and down the country have diverse ways of tackling their responsibilities towards recycling. Having come from Somerset, where there was a combined waste strategy between the county and district—now a unitary council—with separated waste collections covering all recyclable products, I am aware of what is achievable. I now live in Hampshire, where all recyclable products except glass are collected together. This leads to contamination and poor recycling rates.

Throughout the country, there is a series of large and small recycling and processing plants to deal with waste, especially plastic. These recycling plants transform waste plastic into PET for future use in the soft drinks industry. However, partly due to the inferior quality of the recycling materials available to the plants, the import of cheaper virgin plastic and rising electricity costs, 21 of these reprocessing plants have shut down over the past two years. Some of these plants might have stayed open if the recyclable plastic collected had not been contaminated.

I referred earlier to the export of plastics for other countries to deal with. The UK remains reliant on exporting its plastic recycling waste, with 47% of accredited UK recycled plastic packaging reported as being exported; Turkey was the largest destination for these exports. This loophole in the legislation allows the export of waste to be included in recycling figures. This is a smoke and mirrors exercise. Neither the Government nor local authorities have recycled their plastics if all they have done is bundle them up and send them abroad. This is outrageous. We have no way of knowing precisely what is happening to it. Is it being discarded close to waterways or coastlines, where it will damage the environment of aquatic animals and fish? Can the Minister say whether the Government have a strategy to move towards preventing the export of recyclable plastic waste? If not, why not? Exporting plastic waste for recycling when we have adequate recycling plants in the UK that could process this waste is extraordinary, to say the least.

The cost of virgin plastic needs to be comparable with or higher than that of recycled plastic. Without this, our recycling is not competitive. Cheap virgin plastic imports undercut demand. Sadly, the UK market is currently flooded with cheap imports of virgin plastic from China, Africa and the Middle East. For recycling plants to thrive, they need two things: first, a supply of high-quality used plastic to recycle; and, secondly, electricity to be affordable. The Government could do more by placing tariffs on imported cheap virgin plastic, making UK recycled plastic affordable. The plastic packaging tax, currently set at £223.69 per tonne, has increased demand for recycled plastic. However, it takes no account of the origin of the plastic and offers our domestic recyclers only weak support. It reduces the price gap between virgin and recycled plastic but does not close the gap altogether; the system needs to be geared towards the home market.

I turn briefly to the deposit return scheme for recycled plastic bottles. It was first mooted in 2017 but we are now told that it will be rolled out in 2027; that is 10 years to implement, which is unacceptable. Can the Minister reassure us that the target of 2027 for a DRS will be met? To sort the problems of plastic waste, we need a strategy to include, but not be limited to, increasing the plastic packaging tax; banning the export of plastic waste; and swift implementation of a deposit return scheme.

I look forward to a positive response from the Minister on dealing with waste and reducing plastic pollution. This is not a “nice to do”; it is absolutely essential if we are to reduce plastic pollution.