Clothing Sales: Sustainability

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Monday 11th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

What the Government can have the most control over is what happens to clothing when it has finished being used, so we are working with the industry on durability and then diverting it away from landfill. But the noble Baroness is absolutely right that the supply chain comes from right around the world. The amount of clothing produced doubled between 2015 and 2020. This was because of a higher number of middle-class people and their demand for clothing, and it has come at a great environmental cost. The clothing industry may not be the biggest emitter, in terms of carbon and its impact on water, but the Government are working internationally and domestically to tackle this very serious problem.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, as the chair of a new commission on plastics and the environment, I am conscious of the contribution of clothing to the mass of plastics gradually killing off our oceans. Are the Government doing anything to reduce the amount of plastics used in clothing materials in order to begin to address that problem?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We are certainly having ongoing engagement with the industry to try to reduce the amount of plastics. Of course, there is sometimes a trade-off with plastics when you are trying to get more durable garments that are not disposed of so quickly, but the UK water industry research project, which was done by the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, reported in April last year that wastewater treatment plants remove 99% of microplastics by number and 99.5% by mass. We are looking at what France is proposing, which is a mandatory filter in washing machines, and that may be a direction down which we will go.