Non-recyclable and Non-compostable Packaging

David Mackintosh Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2017 Westminster Hall

[David Mackintosh (Northampton South) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 167596 relating to the banning of non-recyclable and non-compostable packaging.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. The petition’s aim is clear. Regardless of the potential challenges posed in achieving it, I am sure we all support its aspiration. The environmental impact of packaging is a significant and growing concern for consumers, Government and retailers. It is not an issue only here in the UK, but I believe that the people of the United Kingdom have an especially keen sense of responsibility towards our environment and the finite resources of the islands we call our home.

The challenges in achieving the aim set out in the petition break down to a number of key areas: innovation in packaging materials to increase recyclability; the incentivising of manufacturers and retailers to use a larger percentage of recyclable and compostable materials; greater uniformity from council to council on the materials that can be recycled; and a general reduction in excess packaging.

Manufacturers and traders have a legitimate need to ensure that their products reach consumers in a satisfactory condition and that perishable goods are adequately protected to prevent them from spoiling. It is important to recognise that protective packaging plays an important part in preventing damage to the goods that people have purchased, which they rightly expect to find in a good condition. None the less, there is agreement among consumers, legislators and industry that the total use of recyclable and compostable materials is a goal that should be pursued.

Personally, I am concerned about the excessive use of packaging. I am sure we have all at times been baffled by the amount of unnecessary packaging that fills up our recycling bins; I will not be the only person here who is frustrated by that as a consumer. Although there has been a general improvement over the years as the public’s sensibilities have changed, producers could do much more to limit further the use of packaging materials. Of course, consumers also do not want to see any increase in price, and that is a challenge.

We all, I am sure, actively engage in delivering leaflets in the run-up to local and general elections, which usually fall a few weeks after Easter. I am always struck by how much Easter egg packaging there is in recycling bins, and the situation is similar shortly after Christmas. We have to question seriously the excess packaging used in many products.

The recent introduction of the 5p charge for plastic bags was an example of a Government initiative that has worked well to reduce the use of non-biodegradable carrier bags in the UK. That was a consumer-facing initiative, however, and it may be that similar initiatives could be introduced to help encourage the same sort of changes in the manufacturing and packaging industries.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that producer responsibility is at the heart of this issue? The very best suppliers of anything, from fresh vegetables to the most complex white goods, do very well on recyclability and the way they think about the end use of packaging and wrapping. Is it not time that we made producers conform to the highest standards, not the lowest?

[David Mackintosh]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. The issue will be driven by consumers, and producers need to take a role, but we as legislators also need to look at the issue and debate it from time to time. I look forward to the Government’s response later today.

As the petition states, there is a specific problem with the amount of plastic being used. In some parts, it cannot be recycled. Almost all types of plastic can or should be recycled, but some are less likely to be recycled because of the issues of cost and the local sorting infrastructures in place. An example of that is black plastic, which for technical reasons is generally discarded as landfill. Industry estimates suggest that that amounts to between 26,000 and 60,000 tonnes each year.

Although the packaging and retail industries are already making efforts to modify materials to improve recyclability, significant improvements can clearly be made if retailers are incentivised to use alternative materials. I understand that the packaging industry is developing new materials that will increase the number of options open to manufacturers. I am pleased to note that much of that work is being driven by retailers. The packaging and retail industries are working together to push those innovations forward. Initiatives such as Pledge4Plastics, the “New Plastics Economy” initiative and the industry-led Plastics 2020 Challenge and plastics industry recycling action plan are playing a key part in that. It is encouraging that major brands, including Coca-Cola, Danone, Mars, Unilever and Sainsbury’s plc, are leading by example and supporting such initiatives. Government at all levels has a responsibility to encourage progress, not least in these times when local government needs to look for cost savings and efficiencies.

The media also have a role to play. I am pleased that tomorrow, Sky will be launching an initiative right across the corporation known as Sky Ocean Rescue. Tomorrow, it will be showcasing the documentary “A Plastic Tide”, which looks at the amount of damage caused by the plastics in our oceans. There are some startling facts. It is estimated that there are 5 trillion pieces of plastic in the world’s oceans, with 8 million tonnes of plastic ending up in the ocean every year. The average UK household uses one rubbish truck’s worth of single-use plastics each year. Every minute, an equivalent amount is dumped into our oceans. Some 40% of all plastic in Europe is used only once. A plastic bottle is estimated to take 450 years to break down into microscopic pieces. Plastic bottles are the third worst plastic polluter of the ocean. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation calculates that by 2050, the plastic in the world’s seas will weigh more than all the fish.

The Government are clearly committed to an increase in recycling and a reduction in the amount of waste going to landfill. It is positive that targets for plastic packaging are set to increase until 2020 and that the Government are consulting on increasing targets for other materials. Through the Waste and Resources Action Programme, the Government are supporting the sort of material development and usage that I have just mentioned. The guidelines issued in October regarding what can and cannot be accepted for recycling were a helpful step forward.

[Mr Sheerman]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if we were working at the highest level of the best local authority in terms of recycling achievement, we would be in a much happier and more successful place? Has he looked? I own up to this: my constituency of Huddersfield is under Kirklees Council, which has a terrible record on recycling. Many local authorities are poor recyclers. Is it not time we took action against underperforming local authorities?

[David Mackintosh]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I agree that the difference between levels of recycling under different local authorities across the country is shocking. It makes it hard for people to understand the regimes involved, and it lets off the hook those retailers or producers that say they do not have to conform because some local authorities do not conform.

I know from my experience as the leader of a local authority that councils are committed to increasing recycling and are already under huge pressure to reduce landfill. As the hon. Gentleman said, recycling does vary across the country. Recycling policy is set at local government level, and there are a number of legal and financial obligations that make it central to the policies of all councils. Will the Minister pledge, when she sums up later, to raise the matter with Ministers in the Department for Communities and Local Government so that we can look at the issue right across Government?

Inconsistency in the types of materials that can be recycled by councils is clearly an issue. If that was resolved, it would give greater clarity to the manufacturers and to those local residents who wish to recycle more. When I raised the matter over the weekend on my social media pages with my constituents, I was pleased by the level of support people gave to doing more to recycle and to looking at how we can ban non-compostable and non-recyclable waste in the future. In fact, a Twitter poll that I carried out showed 80% in favour of banning those materials.

The main issue is one of infrastructure and cost. It may be that proper analysis of how individual councils recycle across the whole of the UK would provide valuable information that could help to identify the best and worst performing areas and inform the Government of possible solutions. There has to be a reasonable balance between reducing the use of non-recyclable and non-compostable packaging to an absolute minimum for the benefit of our environment and still allowing manufacturers to adequately package their goods to prevent damage and spoiling, and to keep costs down.

As well as reducing landfill, the petition talks about non-recyclable and non-compostable rubbish that ends up in waterways. As we have already heard, that can include our oceans. As an MP with both the River Nene and the Grand Union canal running through my constituency in Northampton, I often see the awful situation in which waste is dumped into waterways. Keeping them tidy and clearing them up involves huge difficulty and cost.

[Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making interesting points. Recycling is one thing, but reuse is the next step. We have seen some great initiatives such as the 5p carrier bag charge, which has meant more people reusing them and fewer bags going into landfill and the sea. Would he welcome a similar scheme for plastic bottles, with consumers encouraged to reuse those in supermarkets?

[David Mackintosh]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I know he does a lot of work in this field in his own constituency and he works incredibly hard to raise the issue here in the House. He raises an important point and I am sure the Minister has listened to that. As he said, we saw the impact of the plastic bag charge; the 5p has made a huge difference. Clearly, we should look at other measures and other opportunities moving forward.

When rubbish has been dumped, the blame lies with the people who dumped it into the waterways and other places in the first place. However, different types of packaging would go some way to helping to compost or break it down, and it is right that we look at the issue today. There is agreement across Government, industry and retailers to move towards increasing recyclability, and those elements are already working together to move that forward. I hope we can consider today how that work can be encouraged further, and even accelerated, in a way that prioritises our environment while remaining sensitive to the specific needs of manufacturers and retailers and the challenges faced by local authorities.

The petition was signed by 75,000 people. They care about this issue and want it looked at again to protect our environment—for us, and for future generations. I look forward to the Minister’s response and what we can do to make improvements for the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Pawsey]

The hon. Gentleman could start me off on coffee cups, but I will deal with them later in my remarks. We are talking about consumer choice, and we need an informed consumer. To go back to the Easter egg example, if we wanted only to give people a bit of nice chocolate, we would simply give them a chocolate bar. We do not do that; we choose to give them an Easter egg. In the same way, people choose to buy the Nespresso-type coffee because that is how they like their coffee. We need to find alternative delivery mechanisms that do not give rise to the same level of packaging waste.

[David Mackintosh]

Does my hon. Friend agree that other countries in Europe give Easter eggs in different ways? It is therefore incumbent not only on the consumer to want that to change, but on producers to look at different ways in which to market eggs.

[Mark Pawsey]

The packaging industry is doing that. It is highly innovative and the amount of material that goes into the average Easter egg pack has been reduced. The process, which I will talk about later, is called light- weighting: using the least amount of material necessary to keep the products safe.

Frankly, from the packaging manufacturers’ point of view, because their material is relatively expensive, there is absolutely no point in over-packaging, and no point in creating too much or in making the plastic or board out of too thick a gauge—that would add cost unnecessarily. I acknowledge, however, that over-packaging exists. There are interesting pictures of internet delivery companies that have delivered something the size and shape of a ruler, but it has been wrapped, put in a box and put in another box before being delivered. There is some crazy over-packaging, but my point is that there is no incentive to over-package because of the cost of the material. Many of the internet delivery companies look hard at their policies to ensure that they do not over-package.

My favourite example of what, on the face of it, looks like over-packaging is orange segments in a plastic container on a supermarket shelf. I remember seeing a photograph of that with a little Post-it note stuck on to say, “Wouldn’t it be really nice if nature were able to make some kind of outer skin to make the plastic packaging unnecessary?” I thought that was witty and clever, and it made a point. Another interesting point about that product is that it might be targeted at a consumer without much manual dexterity who would find it difficult to unpeel an orange and for whom it might be much more convenient to buy the pieces of orange in a plastic container. If there were no demand, that product would not be there, but it is a good example of over-packaging.

We often talk about the resource that goes into packaging without thinking much about the resource that goes into manufacturing the product contained in the packaging, and which could therefore be more efficient. INCPEN itself drew attention to the fact that packaging accounts for only 10% of the average energy resource used for food products, although some items are less efficient. Meat, for example, which is probably the least efficient method of food manufacture, could have much better figures. Nevertheless, the packaging element as a proportion of food cost is relatively small.

I hope I have set out some ways in which the industry acknowledges the existing situation and is therefore innovating and effecting change. I will now move on to the content of e-petition No. 167596, which starts with this country’s recycling record, although this country actually has a very proud one. In 2000, just a little more than 10% of all household waste was recycled; by 2016 that figure had risen to 43.9%. It is certainly true that between 2015 and 2016 the recycling rate fell away slightly, but a bit of that was because we have done the easy stuff. We have picked the low-hanging fruit, such as Coke cans and plastic milk bottles, which are being recycled, and we now have to deal with much harder things.

An example of a sector in which recovery and recycling are difficult is plastic film. When we buy our microwave meal, we have the moulded plastic container with a film on top. The film represents a relatively low proportion of the waste—about 10%—but it is not as easy to collect. The other problem with laminates, or plastic films, is that they are often contaminated with food. If we clean our waste before putting it out for recycling, it is relatively easy to clean the container—we can easily clean the food residue out of a container of, for example, lasagne, but it is difficult to get the food residue off the film. We will therefore probably find 10% of plastic material very difficult to recycle, although the e-petition assumes that we will manage to get to everything.

The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) mentioned paper cups. A multilaminate is difficult for the industry to recycle. It is made up of various levels of different materials—a paper cup is made up of an outer of board with a plastic lining on the inside. When we are recycling, we put paper in this bin and plastic in that bin. Where do we put the paper cup, which has a plastic lining on the inside? One of the challenges for the recycling industry is to separate those two materials before they can be recycled.

The industry takes seriously the low rate of recycling for paper cups. Therefore, in recent months the coffee companies and retailers, the cup manufacturers and the people who make the board have set up the Paper Cup Recovery and Recycling Group. They are doing very good work in bringing that together. In fact, as I am sure the Minister will be interested to hear, one of the pieces of advice I have given them is: “You need to get your house in order. If you don’t, and you don’t demonstrate that you can do more work to get more cups recycled, lots of people in Parliament will get on their high horses and make life difficult—you will be obliged to do it. So you have got a choice: either do it through voluntary agreement, or be told to do it.”

The producers have the responsibility for recycling—that is in legislation—but they are also happy to do it. To pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Huddersfield, they accept that that is their responsibility.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Mackintosh]

Thank you, Mr Bone. I will be brief. I thank you for chairing this debate and the 75,000 people who signed the petition. We have had a passionate debate, not least because of the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). He is no longer in his place, but he is a passionate supporter of trying to change things.

We had knowledgeable input from my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey), who is chair of the all-party group on packaging manufacturing. Although we disagreed on Easter eggs, I was pleased to hear from him—not least about the variation of rates of recycling among local authorities.

The hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) touched on the reuse of coffee cups, which is a valid discussion. I am grateful for the input from the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon), who talked about recycling rates in Wales particularly. I am grateful to the Minister for outlining her approach and continued commitment to developing this theme and the Government’s approach to the litter strategy. She outlined her approach to local authorities and their recycling rates, and even managed to mention George Clooney.

I am pleased that we have debated this issue today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 167596 relating to the banning of non-recyclable and non-compostable packaging.