Plastic-free Packaging (Fruit and Vegetables)

Jim Shannon Excerpts
Monday 12th November 2018

(5 years, 4 months ago)

Westminster Hall
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Tulip Siddiq Portrait Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
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I thank the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) for his speech. He expressed many of the sentiments that I was hoping to express, but there is always repetition in debates. I am glad we all agree that we need to reduce the amount of plastic used in supermarkets.

As the hon. Gentleman said, the world has manufactured more plastic in the past decade than in the whole of the previous century. That is a startling fact. In 2015 alone, 292 million tonnes of plastic was produced, and that figure is expected to double by 2025. An estimated 12.7 million tonnes ends up in our oceans each year. Even more startlingly, that figure is expected to triple.

As the hon. Gentleman said, plastic never degrades completely, and it becomes part of our water supply. The UK’s tap water is now 72% contaminated with plastics. The public are more aware than ever of the problem, which is why this petition is so important. People are rightly demanding action.

Some 82% of people in the UK are worried about the impact of plastic pollution in our oceans. My constituents in Hampstead and Kilburn share those concerns and relate them to me daily. They do not want future generations to grow up in a world in which there is more plastic in the ocean than fish.

Last week, I was proud to hear that Belsize Budgens in my constituency has shown serious leadership and announced dramatic cuts to its plastic packaging, at no extra cost to its consumers. I hope other supermarkets around the country will follow suit. I am pleased that the two borough councils in my constituency take recycling, which is obviously linked to the amount of plastic we use, very seriously. Camden Council has committed to boosting its recycling rates to 40% by 2020, and its recycling reward scheme, run in partnership with Local Green Points, has been shortlisted for two national recycling awards. Brent Council, which is also in my constituency, recycles 36% of its waste and is in the top half of London boroughs for recycling.

We should applaud that good news, but recycling is only part of the solution, as several hon. Members said.

Jim Shannon Portrait Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
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The hon. Lady is absolutely right that recycling is only part of what we should do. We all recycle in our own homes. In my house, recycling has overtaken the disposable stuff in the black bin—the blue bin has overtaken the black bin. Does she agree that one thing that has happened is that we have started to educate children at a very early age—at primary school and secondary school—and they take that back home to their parents? If we have an education programme, we have a good chance of changing the thoughts of everyone in the country through our children.

Tulip Siddiq Portrait Tulip Siddiq
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I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I will mention schoolchildren later in my speech. It is important that we educate children and put recycling into the education system—I grew up not learning anything about recycling—so I will call on the Minister to do that.

Plastic can be recycled only a finite number of times. Recycling stems the tide of plastic waste going into landfills and oceans, but it will not completely stop it. We must acknowledge that recycling is expensive. Our cash-strapped local authorities spend £700 million a year collecting and treating packaging. Much plastic waste, including the film that is often used for fruit and vegetables, which the e-petition alludes to, is not currently recyclable.

The hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay mentioned checking cauliflower packaging. I always check avocado packaging before I throw it in the bin, and it says it is not recyclable. We buy things that tend to be cheaper or say they last longer because they are in packaging, but when we go to do our bit to try to save the environment by recycling that packaging, it turns out that we cannot. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) mentioned that in supermarkets across the country, fruit and veg sold without packaging tend to be more expensive than packaged fruit and veg. I have certainly found that. That seems to be a contradiction, which should be looked at.

Some people suggest that rather than cutting down our plastic use, we should change the plastic we use. Bioplastics such as polylactic acid have been touted as a solution. They are made from maize, sugar cane, wheat and other crops, and are said to be compostable. However, such forms of plastic are not the magical solution that they appear to be. For a start, they can be composted only at specialist centres—importantly, they are not compostable for the vast majority of people—so it is not easy to ensure that we put them in the right place, and they take between 100 and 1,000 years to biodegrade in landfill. I think it is safe to say that if we go down the route of using those different kinds of plastic, none of us will be around to see them biodegrade.

Every time such alternative solutions are offered, we should think clearly about their implications. Crops such as corn require huge amounts of land, risking deforestation. That threatens our environment, our wildlife and our planet, which is already under threat. Technologies are developing and more environmentally friendly solutions are appearing all the time. Seaweed-based and even edible plastics may offer a better solution, but they may not be available for some time. On a planet with finite resources, we should be wary of replacing over-consumption of one kind of plastic with another.

The difficulties with those alternatives suggest that the real solution is dramatically to cut down our use of plastic, as the petitioners demand. As elected representatives, whichever fruit or vegetable we prefer—cauliflower or avocado—we need to support people to lead plastic-free lives and encourage future generations to realise the impact of plastic on the environment, wildlife and our planet.

With that in mind, will the Minister commit to increasing funding for plastics innovation? Will she work with local councils to improve recycling rates across the country, and with supermarkets to provide incentives for plastic-free packaging for fruit and vegetables? Will she commit to teaching children about the effects of using plastic and promoting a plastic-free life? Finally, can she give any update on the Prime Minister’s pledge in January to eliminate avoidable plastic waste by 2042? Does the Minister agree that that deadline is wholly inadequate?

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John Howell Portrait John Howell
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That is fine.

The hon. Gentleman is right that by popping into a farmers’ market one can get a cucumber raw, as it were. Like anyone else, I like to eat the things I like the whole year round, but I take the point that the economics of delivering them may mean they have been flown 3,000 or 5,000 miles. I question whether those economics are sound and sustainable in the long term. If that means I have to cut down on certain foods, I shall probably be none the poorer in health terms.

Turning for a moment from the cucumber to other fruit and veg, I notice that there has already been quite a development in fruit packaging, even in supermarkets. I think innovations have already been made in packaging for fruit, a lot of which is recyclable. Berries are a good example of that.

Jim Shannon Portrait Jim Shannon
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Most of us in the Chamber—there are a few exceptions—are probably of a vintage that means we can remember when everything was put in paper bags. The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) is right—there is a fruit and veg store on every high street and a farmers’ market in every town, so there are still lots of opportunities in that respect. Does the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) agree that we should look at what more we can do with recycled newspapers, for instance? The resulting paper product may well be the answer. We can look at changing how people shop, but there may also be ways of changing packaging.

John Howell Portrait John Howell
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The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The way we look at this issue is important. My district council always does very well on recycling, but it needs to look at non-recyclable elements such as plastic, which represent its biggest cost.

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John Howell Portrait John Howell
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I thank the hon. Gentleman for that suggestion. It is no problem at all for me to look at Oxford City; it is the next district council to mine. Both councils have very good recycling. I shall certainly look at that and see how it gets on.

I recently returned from a visit to Israel, and there were enormous markets everywhere with enormous quantities of fresh food and vegetables. People took along bags, ordered what they wanted—if they knew the seller very well, even feeling the product first—and simply put it in their bags. There was no packaging whatsoever. I do not yet claim to be so old as to remember some things, but I remember when that was the normal way of purchasing fruit and vegetables in my area. There is something about that that we should go back to.

When we go to markets overseas, there is an instant smell—almost as soon as we get off the plane—that is characteristic of that country and which comes, to a large extent, from the raw fruit and vegetables and the herbs and spices that are produced there. They are not wrapped up and placed where they cannot be smelt. Smell is an important part of the debate, because if we cannot smell a product, how do we know whether it is fresh or ripe? The colour is perhaps an indication, but I have always gone by smell and touch. Those two things are two very important things, and it is insane, therefore, that we use so much packaging, for the environmental reasons but also because of our experience of and relationship with food.

A number of options are available, one of which is to buy smaller portions. We do not need to buy eight tomatoes if we are perhaps going to use only four. I also like the idea of the boxes of vegetables that are produced. I know that they are relatively expensive, but the vegetables come unwrapped. They are all the better for that, and you can get a good feel for them.

I know that plastic has a role in keeping food fresh and keeping dirty hands off it, but it would still be nice occasionally to see vegetables with the soil attached, before taking them home to wash and cook them. Plastic keeps sweat away from the vegetables and prevents contamination, but there must be other ways of doing that, using technology to overcome the problem.

Jim Shannon Portrait Jim Shannon
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I thank the hon. Gentleman for his very important point. Housewives want to see nice, clean products, with no soil or other materials in the bag. I cast my mind back to when we were all young at home and my mum would get 10 half-hundredweight bags of potatoes—there was a big family of us. They came in October and sat in the coldness of the shed until the following March—the whole winter—when they were finished. How is it that that could happen in those days, but today we cannot even keep a potato for a week?

John Howell Portrait John Howell
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The hon. Gentleman asks a very valid question. Research done in schools showed that no one quite knew where vegetables came from. No one had ever seen vegetables with soil on, so no one knew that they came from the ground. Everyone thought that vegetables always came from the shop, and no one had a clue about where they came from before that. That is terrible, in terms of our relationship with food. I like to think of myself as a great foodie, and I like to have a relationship with food. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) smiles and nods at me. He is very welcome to come and dine with me; I promise there will be no salad.

My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay made the point that consumer must take the lead. After the initial flurry of interest that got consumers thinking, there is great fear that consumer interest may have peaked. We must ensure that that peak remains high and that interest in what is right continues. I am sure that many things can be done. Education and the role of children are vital in maintaining that interest, but we can all do a lot to set a good example. I was pleased to see the royal family taking a lead in banning single-use plastic from the palaces.

That is probably as much as I wanted to say in this excellent debate. I will certainly do all I can to encourage people not to use plastic, and I hope that my problems with the cucumber will be well and truly solved in the near future.