Single-Use Plastics

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, I am not convinced that the argument follows. We are among the most ambitious countries in the world in terms of where we are heading in relation to single-use plastics. The European Union is also putting a lot of emphasis on reducing unnecessary single-use plastics, as is Scotland. We may be operating in different ways, implementing different rules and using different tools, but we are heading in the same direction, and there is no doubt in my mind that we are moving to an era where the casual use of single-use plastic is coming to an end.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

Do the Government intend to have an initiative with the NHS over the use of plastics, given that it is has been estimated that 133,000 tonnes of waste plastic are produced by the NHS each year, which make up 22.7% of its total waste? Some plastics are important for infection control, yet 13.7% of all this waste is plastic film, often used just in packaging, so the approach across the whole NHS needs to be different from that across other aspects of society.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes an important point. Single-use plastics that are necessary within the context of delivery of health services are well known and, clearly, they would not be caught up in the measures that the Government are introducing. Beyond those specific items, the same rules would apply in relation to the NHS. I welcome our gradual abandonment of the use of disposable face masks for even the most ludicrous events. The numbers of face masks abandoned around the world defy belief and have come to dwarf some of the plastic pollution caused by things such as stirrers, straws and balloons that we are all obsessed by. I warmly welcome the world gradually dropping the theatrics in relation to those masks.