Schools: Great British September Clean

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 24th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister will agree that, with litter and waste, prevention is better than cure. In the light of the Which? study out this morning showing that two-thirds of branded grocery packaging is not fully recyclable, what steps are the Government taking to force companies to switch to less packaging and less damaging packaging, and to cover the costs of dealing with the waste? Following on from the questions asked by other two noble Lords, why do we need another consultation on England’s bottle deposit scheme, when we are already world-trailing on delivery of this?

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

On the second point, consultations are more often than not a statutory requirement, but on the broader point, the Government absolutely agree that the emphasis should be shifted as far as possible on to producers. As noble Lords will know, we are introducing extended producer responsibility through our legislation, and that means making those producers pay the full lifetime costs of collecting and managing packaging when it becomes waste. But we also want to encourage businesses to design and use packaging that is easily recyclable, and these reforms will complement the introduction of a tax on plastic packaging that does not contain at least 30% recycled content.