Global Plastics Treaty

Emma Hardy Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairwomanship, Dr Huq. It is lovely to see you here. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) for securing this really important debate, and Members on both sides of the House for their valuable contributions. This is an important topic that people really care about.

This week, I had the most effective lobbying I have ever had; I was lobbied by 12 primary school children who came with a message in a bottle—they literally brought a bottle with a message and a petition from Greenpeace calling on me to do everything I can to secure plastic reduction. They too had taken part in the Great Plastic Count, and even the youngest, who was only seven years old, told me about all the plastic that they had. I just wanted to give a special mention to those children from Bonner primary school. This is Parliament Week, when we encourage young people to get involved in politics and understand how Parliament works, so it is a good time to engage with everybody across the country on this important issue.

[Sarah Dyke]

Carymoor Environmental Trust in my constituency runs fantastic plastic sessions and has educated over 58,000 children in Somerset about the environmental impact of plastic and about ways to avoid single-use plastic. Does the Minister agree that the best way to avoid single-use plastic is to deliver a global plastics treaty that meaningfully cuts plastic production?

[Emma Hardy]

Absolutely. The global plastics treaty, which I will talk about in more detail, is crucial, and it is really encouraging to see how everybody is getting behind it.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

The Minister talked about being lobbied by children, and we all know how effective kids are when they lobby their MPs. I also want to mention the education work that The Deep in Hull does with children on plastic pollution, which is impressive, to put it mildly. On the topic of education, the University of Hull has recently carried out research showing that 8 million tonnes of plastic ends up in the sea, making up 80% of the debris in our oceans.

[Emma Hardy]

I thank my hon. Friend. I am not meant to show bias, but The Deep is fantastic; we should all go and visit it. My hon. Friend is absolutely right—it does incredible work in educating children about ocean conservation, nature and plastic use. It is an amazing asset for the constituency I represent, and its work is highly regarded internationally.

I move on to talk about the treaty in more detail. After two years of negotiations, we are approaching the fifth and final scheduled meeting of the intergovernmental negotiating committee, which starts on 25 November. The executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, Inger Andersen, has referred to this treaty as

“the most significant environmental multilateral deal since the Paris accord.”

We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to agree an ambitious treaty to end plastic pollution, and that is why an agreement at Busan this year is critical. If we are to stop plastic entering the environment at an increasing rate, we need a treaty that provides actions at all stages of the plastics life cycle. We are proud, as a country, to be a founding member of the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution. That coalition includes more than 60 countries, and calls for an ambitious and effective treaty that will end plastic pollution by 2040. In September, the High Ambition Coalition published a ministerial statement calling for an ambitious treaty that covers the full life cycle of plastics, including design, production, consumption and end of life. Then, on 24 September, the UK signed the Bridge to Busan declaration, which makes the case for an ambitious treaty that includes upstream measures to ensure the sustainable consumption and production of primary plastic polymers.

It is critical that the new treaty on plastic pollution takes action across the entire life cycle, including production and consumption. The evidence is clear that we cannot solve the problem of plastic pollution unless we take action at every stage. Global plastic production is projected to double by 2050, reaching 800 million metric tonnes annually. Evidence shows that on current trends, waste management infrastructure will not be able to keep up with the pace of plastic production and consumption, and the level of mismanaged plastic waste will continue to rise. That is why the UK supports binding provisions in the treaty to reduce the production and consumption of primary plastic polymers to sustainable levels, and to enable the transition to a circular economy.

To end plastic pollution, we need all actors in the plastics value chain to act. That includes national and local governments, and the private and financial sectors. We need to bring everyone along with us. That includes the marginalised, undervalued and unrecognised waste pickers, most of whom are women. They handle more than half the world’s plastic waste for recycling, so it is important that their voices are heard.

We have partnered with the Ocean Plastics Leadership Network to run the UK treaty dialogues ahead of each round of negotiations. The dialogues include actors at all stages of the plastic value chains, as well as from academia and environmental non-governmental organisations. Those dialogues have helped us understand the views on the treaty to inform our approach to negotiations.

On 6 November, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and I, in conjunction with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, hosted a plastic pollution treaty roundtable for business leaders, retailers and financial institutions. We discussed the importance of agreeing an ambitious, legally binding treaty to end plastic pollution. Participants also signed a statement setting out the key elements that the treaty must include in order to end plastic pollution by 2040.

Many businesses and organisations are leading the way already. An example of this is the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty, which has been joined by more than 85 organisations, including major global businesses, financial institutions and NGOs. The UK scientific community is also world-leading and playing an active role in ensuring that the treaty negotiations are grounded in science, as well as developing the solutions and innovations that will help us take action on this issue.

However, we also recognise the importance of mobilising support for countries most in need, in order to implement the treaty, and this is an essential element of its effectiveness. We can end plastic pollution only through globally co-ordinated action and by mobilising and aligning financial flows from all sources, including all actors and stakeholders across the full plastics value chain at both the global and the local stage. The UK supports the use of the Global Environmental Facility to support the implementation of the treaty. It has established a track record of supporting environmental agreements on climate and biodiversity.

[Dr Opher]

Does the Minister know why there is no shadow Minister here to contribute to the debate for the Opposition?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Opher]

Okay. Thank you.

[Emma Hardy]

I have to say that this is one thing on which I believe there is cross-party consensus. There seems to be an awful lot of support for the treaty, and I hope that that unity continues, especially as we are going into incredibly difficult negotiations. It is really important for us as a country to stand united behind the treaty and what it means if we are not only to seek an agreement, but to ensure that it is fulfilled. I would like to hope that everyone agrees on how important this is, but I am an optimist—what can I say?

The UK is already the largest donor to the Global Plastic Action Partnership, which brings together Governments, businesses and civil society to tackle plastic pollution and increase investment in circular economy approaches in countries eligible for official development assistance.

I was asked what we are doing as a country to reduce plastic packaging. We plan to lay regulations on a deposit return scheme for drinks containers in England and Northern Ireland before Parliament in late 2024—hopefully before Christmas—for them to come into force in early 2025, assuming that parliamentary time allows. The planned launch date of the scheme is October 2027. If we are going to argue what other countries need to do, it is important that we are seen to be taking action ourselves. I really appreciate that companies—my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford and Bow (Uma Kumaran) mentioned one in her constituency—are promoting innovative and more sustainable solutions to plastic pollution, especially from single-use plastics.

Plastic pollution is one of the greatest long-term global challenges we face, and the UK is committed to working with the chair and members of the intergovernmental negotiating committee to reach an agreement. All parties are committed to seeking to conclude negotiations on the treaty by the end of 2024. We need to secure a robust, ambitious treaty to accelerate action at pace and scale, and that is what the UK team will be pushing for in Busan.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud again for securing the debate, and I thank everyone else who has supported it.

Question put and agreed to.