Plastic Food and Drink Packaging

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Sixteenth Report of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Session 2017-19, Plastic food and drink packaging, HC 2080.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. It is also a pleasure to see the new Minister in her place and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin), here as well.

Plastic waste has been at the forefront of public interest for the last few years. There is, quite rightly, outrage about the impact of plastic pollution on the natural environment and about the amounts of recyclable waste exported, only to pollute other countries. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee set out to examine whether enough is being done to reduce the use of plastic and properly manage waste in the food and drink sector.

It is worth reflecting on the fact that plastic is everywhere for a reason. For food and drink, it is lightweight and flexible, and it ensures high standards of hygiene. We should also remember that when plastic is used properly, it can help us to prevent food waste, which is a big contributor to carbon emissions. We do not want to increase the amount of food that is wasted.

Plastic’s durability is both a blessing and a curse. The properties that make it useful for food preservation also mean that it lingers in our seas for decades. We need to manage our waste better. More materials need to be captured for recycling. The Committee was supportive of the Government’s proposal to introduce consistency in recycling collections and simpler labelling for consumers. We would like to see that across the whole country.

Unfortunately, it is not particularly clear how much of our plastic waste is actually recycled. The Government often cite a 46% recycling rate for plastic packaging. However, businesses that produce fewer than 50 tonnes of packaging per year do not have to report on how much they place on the market or recycle, so there is a gap in the figures. We think that threshold should be lowered to 1 tonne of packaging. I ask the Minister to consider that.

On top of that, 60% of what is classed as “recycled” is actually exported abroad. Members will have seen media reports that our plastic exports can end up in countries where they are landfilled or burned instead, which can really affect villagers and others in those countries. We must recycle our own waste. We do not currently know how much plastic waste is recycled—it is likely to be less than 46%—and, if we cannot measure recycling, we cannot know whether policy changes are having the right effect. It is vital that we get the right figures.

The introduction of a deposit return scheme was another focus of our inquiry. We heard convincing evidence that a DRS would boost recycling of plastic bottles. I am convinced that if plastic bottles are to be recycled, that must be done through a reverse-vending machine so that the same bottle can be made again from that plastic. Hon. Members may ask: why am I saying that? It is because most recycled plastic is not used to make the same item again; we get a much lower-quality waste plastic. We need to ensure that the label, the top and all those things are recyclable so that we can make another bottle out of the bottle that went through the reverse-vending machine.

We have also heard concerns from local authorities that taking that valuable material away from kerbside collection would undermine the viability of their wider recycling efforts. We therefore recommend that the Government monitor carefully the financial impact on local authorities of introducing a deposit return scheme.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

In Northern Ireland, we already have kerbside collections—indeed, we have moved on marvellously with recycling materials. It is incredible what a household can do when it commits to recycling. Has the Chair of the Select Committee had an opportunity to look at any of the other regions—Northern Ireland, for instance—where kerbside collection is already in place and working well?

[Neil Parish]

We did not look at the situation in Northern Ireland, although I understand that that is a good method of collection. In England, we found that because there are so many authorities with so many different contracts, there are totally different methods for what is recycled where. To put on my local government hat from many years ago, local government likes its own views and ways of dealing with things. However, in this case, we need to know how to recycle properly.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Gentleman is very kind to give way again. In Northern Ireland—let us be honest, we are a smaller region—we may have six or 10 councils working together. Perhaps that is something that England could look at.

[Neil Parish]

The hon. Gentleman makes the point that Northern Ireland is naturally a more compact, smaller community. Recycling works quite well in Wales, where again there are fewer authorities, which can come together better. Given its size and the number of its authorities, England is more difficult. Somehow or other, the Government must send down an edict to local authorities to pull them together. Some local authorities will have long-term contracts that will take a while to get out of, but the Government must pull them together, because what we recycle and how we do it here in London is totally different from what we do on the farm back in Somerset, for instance.

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[Jim Shannon]

I am most intrigued by the hon. Gentleman’s comment, and what he said was true. Those of us who come from the countryside probably expect our potatoes to have a bit of soil with them, and maybe a wee distortion or a growth on either side. That does not really bother us. However, the housewife does not see things as we who live in the countryside see them. The housewife sees things as products and, with respect, she probably has no idea where they come from or what they are like; they just have to look good. As far as the supermarkets are concerned, products must look good; as we all know, that may not make them good.

[Derek Thomas]

I will not criticise my own Government, but I learned home economics in school, which taught me what cauliflowers and so on look like when picked from the ground. There is a joke around in Cornwall about children thinking that bottles of milk are literally collected from nests, rather than that milk comes from cows. However, the point has been properly made that we need to get to a place where people understand—or have the opportunity to learn, if they choose to—how food is produced, and how they can use it in a much more natural way. I will not say much more on that.

I come back to the intervention about shrink-wrapped cucumber. I accept the points that have been made, and that we can use alternatives to keep cucumbers fresh, but we cannot use the same argument for tinned vegetables. Baked beans, which are already wrapped in tins, are wrapped again in plastic. I cannot see the need for that. Some producers find that cardboard is a useful alternative. I think that the supermarkets and food packagers need to be leaned on by the Government to get rid of unnecessary single-use plastic. I do not think that there is any excuse for using it. I do not want to pick on Mr Kipling, who was a favourite of mine when I was younger, but he likes to wrap his cakes and biscuits in far too many wrappers. It would be great for people to take action about the lack of movement, not only from the Government but from some of the companies that continue to use unnecessary plastic.

The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife—I am sorry; I am really not familiar with his constituency—made a good point about the enthusiasm of local people. There is enormous enthusiasm and determination among the people I meet to cut plastic where possible, so I have three, or possibly four, simple asks.

First, what I hear from people is that when they buy biodegradable or compostable products, they want to know what that actually means. If we buy biodegradable nappies, as I did, how long does a nappy sit in our compost heap before it disappears? I put the nappies in my compost heap—and then I had to put them in the bin about four years later. We need to be really clear with people and have a proper legal definition of what biodegradable actually means. How long should we expect something to take to rot down? What is compostable?

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[Derek Thomas]

I agree, and I welcome that intervention. It is true that there will be some single-use plastic that we cannot avoid. If we go into a hospital, we will find items that are wrapped for what are obviously good reasons. I will name-check now if I am permitted to, Mr Stringer. There is a large outlet—retailer—in my constituency called Thornes. It sells a lot of fruit and veg and all sorts of other items. It decided, very early after the Government launched their 25-year environment strategy in January 2018, that it would not use single-use plastic, and it has moved away from it, including for its fruit and veg. That outlet certainly compares in size to a small supermarket, so if it can do it, it must be possible for supermarkets to take greater measures than they already do. But I accept that we need real leadership from Government, and urgently.

I have two or three more asks. We need legislation—I hope that we will do this through the Environment Bill—to ban unnecessary single-use plastic. That is the only way we will get businesses to really respond and urgently develop the alternatives. We also need legislation to ensure that all remaining plastic that is necessary—my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton was right to say that there is necessary plastic—can be recycled. We still purchase plastics and products that cannot be recycled, and that just needs to come to an end.

[Jim Shannon]

It would be remiss of me not to commend some of the supermarkets for what they are doing. In my constituency, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) and, I suspect, in everyone’s constituency, the large supermarket chains, come Friday and Saturday night, have a system whereby if a product, such as fresh fruit or veg, is coming near its end of life, they disperse the produce among community groups. As I said, that is done in my constituency, and it works exceptionally well. It does away with the loss of the product and someone gets the benefit of it. Supermarkets are chastised, but sometimes they do a lot of good things.

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[Gillian Keegan]

The hon. Gentleman is right. We have an opportunity to standardise a new scheme—well, an old scheme that has been brought back—that we are not introducing. I hope the Minister takes note that we should be working together to ensure we have standardised schemes.

We need to get to grips with the current situation. As my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives mentioned, the report rightly emphasises the current inadequacy in the monitoring of plastic usage. That impacts our ability to accurately calculate our usage. Some surveys suggest that we are putting about 2.2 million tonnes of plastic packaging into the UK market each year, but we need to do more to know exactly how much we are using.

Our priority must be to use less plastic. There is a whole host of solutions to help us achieve that. We have seen fantastic results from the 5p plastic bag, which led to a significant reduction, with 15.6 million fewer bags used since 2015. There is scope to extend that to other forms of packaging and products where suitable alternatives exist.

We all know that immediate changes can be made. The thing that bugs me is crisps: every packet I buy is half empty. Introducing regulation around packaging, so that it is designed around product size, instead of making things look bigger, would be a good start. Many shops and some supermarkets are going further.

[Jim Shannon]

As my friend, the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman), mentioned, some of the schemes run in Scotland have been done in Northern Ireland, too. The plastic bag charge has been incredibly successful in Northern Ireland, to such an extent that the use of plastic bags has reduced to about 20% or 25%—a massive reduction. It has been successful because people want it to be successful, because children tell their parents that they must do it and because that money goes back into society and can help environmental projects. We should be pushing more on that.

[Gillian Keegan]

I completely agree. As well as being influenced by children, consumer behaviour can take some time to change. I remember coming home from this place late at night and I would never have plastic bags with me to go shopping—I am sure many of us have done the same—but I have solved that problem by buying one of these little fold-up bags, so at least I always have that. We also have reusable plastic bottles. I have lost mine again today. I do not know how many I have lost. I am sure my impact on the environment in lost water bottles is greater than what I have saved, so now I have taken to reusing this plastic bottle. I think I am not supposed to refill it, but I do anyway.

There are plenty of opportunities for us to move towards being plastic-free. Everywhere we go, we see more and more plastic. Once we become conscious of it, that is it, we see it everywhere. Some supermarkets are moving to packaging-free aisles and even the funny-shaped potatoes, which my friend, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), referred to—I have seen them with a little bit of soil on them, but I am sure that is just for authenticity.

Last year, I opened Stansted Park farm shop, in my constituency. The whole business has an environmentally friendly ethos. Most of their produce is loose. It has drastically reduced all plastic use. There is a future model in package-free and refill shops, similar to the old-fashioned way. My grandmother used to have glass jars for everything. We used to take them to the shops and they would be refilled from huge sacks. I can see the hon. Member for Strangford nodding, because he remembers the same. We are obviously around the same age.

E-commerce could play an important role in this area by delivering food in reusable boxes on a subscription or bespoke order model. We need to do something about e-commerce. I do not know if you have noticed this, Mr Stringer, but when I order my stuff, it comes in several different deliveries, with several different delivery drivers coming to my house two or three times a day. Maybe I am just a prolific shopper, but they could deliver them by a more transport-friendly mechanism. Moving to online shopping does not necessarily mean it is environmentally friendly, so we need to encourage those businesses, as well.

The humble cucumber has been mentioned a few times. Apparently, wrapped, they have a shelf-life of 15 days when chilled, but only nine days when unwrapped. That is true. They go all soft when they are unwrapped, and they are inedible. Removing plastics in some cases can increase other forms of waste. I do not think there is much market for an end-of-life cucumber. Other forms of waste and emissions are released when we consider the entire carbon budget of products. We need to get this right.

I am still driving a diesel car. Why? Because I followed the advice and bought a diesel car. Now, of course, I cannot get rid of it. The market share of diesel cars went from something like 14% to 65%. Everybody followed the advice and then we realised the advice was wrong. We must get the advice right. There are many alternatives, as the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) suggested, such as seaweeds and potato starch wrapping. That innovation will come the more the Government incentivise innovation.

Most of us have the ambition to use less single-use plastic. Many people now use alternatives. I try to use less in my day-to-day life. I mentioned my water bottle. I also gave up plastic for Lent. It was a nightmare. It was incredibly different and I had to change my whole life for six weeks. I chose an easier option this time, because it was so difficult to give up plastic for six weeks. We need to make this easy. We are consumers and we simply will not do it, if it is incredibly difficult and everybody must carry around glass jars and things that do not fit into everyday life.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady referred to consumer behaviour. As I was saying to the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife, the greatest scourge of this modern age is probably takeaways. I am in the takeaways regularly, but I am talking about the materials they use to wrap the product in. I am old enough—I do not think the hon. Lady is, despite what she says—to remember fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, and they tasted great. This system does not allow that to happen. Some of the takeaway companies have come up with some ideas for reducing the products they use. I think the Chairman is looking at me—I think this is an important point. If we want to do something specific and great, we should look at methods to reduce takeaway packaging. That would make a magnificent change to the disposables market.

[Gillian Keegan]

I completely agree. There were some mentions of takeaways in the report. We could also not have as many takeaways. That is another thing that has changed in the last 20 to 30 years: we eat a lot more takeaway food. It is not very good for us, so there are many reasons, not only environmental, to cut out takeaway food to some degree, and to use more locally sourced products and to cook ourselves. My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives mentioned home economics. I cannot say that my home economics classes were very successful. When I brought my rock cakes home, my father said he now understood where the name came from and I have not made a cake since.

[Jim Shannon]

That was very harsh!

[Gillian Keegan]

It was harsh, but, unfortunately, it was true.

Making it easy for people to use less is the first thing. Recycling has a major role to play. We have all said that we need to standardise recycling. Between my home in London and my home in Petworth what and how I can recycle is completely different. When I go back to my parents in Knowsley, their system is not only different, but the opposite of what I do at home in Petworth, so I am always putting things in the wrong bin. Even things such as colours could be made so much easier. We have allowed every council to design it. I think that is driven by the design of the equipment at their local recycling centre, what it can do, and how it manages bottle tops and various bits of plastic. That has driven the standards, just by what local authorities have invested in for their recycling facilities.

As part of the endeavours to increase recycling rates, the Government have proposed a new tax system to ensure that at least 30% of packaging is made from recycled material, and I fully support that direction of travel. However, I also think that the Committee’s recommendation to have a more modulated tax system might be more effective in incentivising the use of a greater percentage of recycled material.

We have talked about the deposit return scheme. When I was reading about it, I remember thinking, yet again, “That sounds almost exactly like what used to happen many years ago.” I remember the Alpine lemonade man coming round when I was a child. The bottles then were glass. We used to collect them; in fact, it was the only way we made any pocket money. In fact, for today’s children, there would be a financial incentive for them to collect all of this plastic if they could make some money out of it.

There is not a single school that any of us go into in which we are not asked about insects that are no longer around, which we never even knew existed. Children today are so well educated on the environment; indeed, they are already forcing a generational change. We have a beach school at Chidham, run by one of my schools, and I will ask the staff if they have done the sand experiment for our area. We also have forest schools. I go to schools in Southbourne, Sidlesham, Harting, Loxwood and Rake, and they all have eco-warriors and eco-councils. The questions I get asked in schools are the hardest questions I get; I can talk about Brexit all day long, but with some of these environmental questions, the children have studied to a much greater degree than we ever did. In fact, we did not do any of that in school and now we are struggling to catch up. The children really have a fantastic approach and I am pretty sure that if they were incentivised with cash, they would make sure that they collected everything for deposit return schemes, because it would be a good way of topping up their pocket money.

The 1st Chichester Brownies unit in Christchurch wrote to me recently to ask me to support its plastic promise, which of course I have agreed to do. It aims to raise awareness of plastic pollution and to reduce our reliance on single-use plastics. So those children are not only telling their parents what to do but telling their MPs what to do, which is very welcome. In the letter I received, it was obvious that the Brownies were very excited by the deposit return scheme; they really welcomed it and I can see them going round in their uniforms to pick up all the plastic, and making some cash in the meantime. Probably, that cash will go to good causes, because that is another thing that children get involved in.

I will conclude by emphasising the importance of international co-operation in tackling this issue. Currently, of the estimated 8 million tonnes of plastics that enter the oceans each year, the US, the UK and Europe collectively contribute about 2%. Therefore, the Government’s investment of over £60 million to help the Commonwealth nations improve their waste management is vital and is the right approach. We have to show leadership and there is much we can do to help other countries. That would also make a massive impact. I hope that we can continue our domestic journey of self-improvement in this area, and I believe the best way to instil change abroad is to lead by example at home. I also look forward to seeing the technology and innovation that will rise to this challenge, to make sure that we free our world from plastic pollution.