Plastic-free Packaging (Fruit and Vegetables)

John McNally Excerpts

Monday 12th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) on securing this extremely topical and very important debate. I admire his consistency on issues of environmental pollution and its effects on our everyday lives. His involvement with Surfers Against Sewage and many other organisations is to be commended.

The petition asks for supermarkets—we have not yet touched on the huge problem of commercial catering supplies—to offer customers an eco-friendly option of no packaging: a gesture of libertarian paternalism is required from major retailers, to offer their customers the choice of buying fruit and vegetables with or without plastic wrapping. Plastic-free aisles are a great nudge to focus all our minds on a waste and pollution-free environment. The petition has received nearly 125,000 signatures, and the number is growing, which shows that a great many people are very concerned about the issue.

There are several recycling initiatives out there, looking at how to recycle different products. That is always good to observe and hear about. For example, some companies are making efforts to solve their own packaging problems. Recently, the huge brand name of Kellogg’s announced a scheme whereby Pringles tubes can be posted to TerraCycle using freepost labels. Additionally, Colgate and TerraCycle have announced the launch of a Colgate oral care recycling programme, which is an interesting development. At face value, they seem to be good initiatives, but then confusion enters the dialogue.

Confusion comes by way of Simon Ellin, the chief executive officer of The Recycling Association, who has described the schemes as a fudge that does not solve the issues. The statements and initiatives are confusing and contradictory, and they prompt the question of whether the organisations are unable to have difficult conversations with one another. Do the Government have to initiate or host talks between these important corporations and organisations to resolve the aforementioned issues? I look forward to the Minister telling us whether she hosts any conversations between those organisations.

[Steve Double]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind comments. He has highlighted some of the difficulties with recycling, which I think we understand, but does he agree that, for those reasons, focusing on reducing the amount of plastic used in the first place is better than trying to recycle what is used?

[John Mc Nally]

I agree with everything the hon. Gentleman has said, and I will come to that point later.

Plastic food packaging that is not recycled is costing Scotland an estimated £11 million annually. That needs to change, and the Scottish Government are taking appropriate measures to address that problem. I congratulate the Westminster Government on following the example of the devolved Governments by, for example, introducing a plastic bag charge. Wales introduced a charge in 2011, and over the first year that the ban was in place, it achieved a 71% reduction in the number of bags used. Northern Ireland achieved a two-thirds reduction in bag use over the first year. Scotland achieved an 80% reduction in bag use in 2014, and after England introduced its 5p bag scheme, it achieved an 80% reduction in the first six months. Those are all good strides forward, and the absence of blue bags on our streets is probably the most visible achievement. We do not see those bags anymore.

[Mr Sheerman]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, faced with the dreadful dilemma of global warming, a plastic bag charge is a small part of what we can do? We are in the foothills. Should we not raise our game and look at the environment in the holistic sense? At least we should have a Government who see the damage. The hon. Gentleman knows, as I do, that we in this country were still burying our waste in holes in the ground until we became members of the European Union, which made us stop. As we come out of the European Union, we are going to be dragged back into the dark ages.

[John Mc Nally]

Again, the hon. Gentleman makes good points. I assure him that we on the Environmental Audit Committee were warned about becoming the dirty man of Europe once again, and I hope that we will be given a reassurance today that we will not go down that path. I share the hon. Gentleman’s anxieties. We are at a pivotal moment when we can change these things, and the world is with us—probably through the work of the great David Attenborough, who has beautifully highlighted all the problems. I ask the Minister to reassure us that all retailers, rather than just a select few, will be charged accordingly, as happens in all the other home nations.

In 2017, the Scottish Government launched an initiative to develop a fit-for-purpose deposit return scheme to tackle everyday waste problems, such as single-use plastic and single-use items that are disposed of. I praise the UK Government for attending the summit in London in July this year, organised by the Scottish Government, to discuss how the home nations can co-operate to develop deposit return schemes that are fit for purpose, and nudge everyone into better habits when disposing of plastic and single-use items.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

I apologise for arriving late to the debate. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the deposit return scheme involves substantial investment in reverse vending machines, costing upwards of £10,000, £15,000 or even £20,000, and that we would be better off spending that money on improving our recycling infrastructure to get more products recycled, which is what we all want?

[John Mc Nally]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, and there are two sides to the argument. We have to start somewhere—that is a certainty—and the way we are recycling at the moment is not the best way, which is a point that I hope to touch on later. I know that deposit retail schemes involve some complicated systems, but there may be ways to make them commercially viable that would get more people involved.

[Mr Sheerman]

Let’s do them both.

[John Mc Nally]

Exactly—why not do both? We would like to hear how those schemes can be developed, and that will have to happen across all the home nations and probably across the whole world.

We are all aware that there is a problem with how we dispose of, for example, plastic cotton buds. Those have been banned for years in America, but we are still using them here, which is unacceptable. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on flood prevention, I know those buds are a constant problem: they are used in schools and colleges, they go down waste pipes and plug holes, and they cost a fortune. They cause problems, including for insurance companies, so at the end of the day we all have to pay for them. Those problems are totally avoidable. We do not need those buds, and action has to be taken. In Scotland, we are trying to ban the manufacture of plastic stem cotton buds. We announced our plans in January this year, and the UK Government followed in October. I believe that Wales is behind in this area, which is surprising: it has been leading on a lot of these policies, but it is behind the curve in this area.

I have visited supermarkets and other retailers in my constituency of Falkirk. They all recognise the need to reduce the quantity of plastic used in packaging for the sake of sustainability, and without a doubt customers also feel a desire to reduce the amount of plastic packaging they buy. Although that is a challenge, it could ultimately be a win-win situation for retailers: they could improve sustainability and cut packaging costs.

Those retailers are tackling that problem in creative ways, which is extremely encouraging. For example, they are seeking to eliminate the use of black plastic, so the plastic they do use can be easily sorted and recycled. Familiar items such as milk bottles and plastic trays are being redesigned to make them lighter, increase the use of recycled plastic in their manufacture, and eliminate the use of unnecessary and unrecyclable items.

However, I visited Dobbies in Perth last week—I was at a funeral in that city, and went for a cup of coffee with my wife—and there was an advert on a screen about how to use plastic when building up Christmas decorations. I thought, “How on earth can they be doing that in this day and age?” That should not have been on the screen at all.

Falkirk Council is phasing out single-use plastics in its offices and introducing initiatives to help communities recycle. TerraCycle, a UK-wide company, is helping communities arrange convenient pick-up points for recycling. Through Keep Scotland Beautiful and Zero Waste Scotland, the Scottish Government have funded initiatives such as Revive Falkirk, teaching people what they can do to reduce food waste and make low-carbon dietary and life choices as well as the skills they need to upcycle or repurpose discarded goods.

Small, often family-run companies such as Forth Valley Recycling & Packaging and Nathans Wastesavers in my home town of Denny are establishing themselves at the forefront of this new economic sector. The many ethical companies across Scotland and the UK need certainty that standards will be maintained and aligned post-Brexit. Will the Minister comment on whether the new policies that are coming forward will be aligned to those standards?

Plastic packaging is only part of the story. Making a concerted effort to effectively tackle this problem requires addressing issues such as fly-tipping and lack of public waste infrastructure—what we on the Environmental Audit Committee have called “binfrastructure”. It surely cannot be beyond the wit of manufacturers and local authorities across the UK to harmonise colour-coded bins to match colour-coded products. Why can we not have a green label to match a green bin, an amber label to match an amber bin, and a red label to match a red bin, as the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) touched on earlier? It is so confusing; nobody seems to know what to do when they get all their material together. We need to prevent waste going into our bins unnecessarily.

Last year, environmental prosecutions in England were at a record low. Responsibility for that was laid at the feet of local authorities in England, while simultaneously, those authorities’ funding was being slashed. That is short-termism at its absolute worst. The UK could learn a lot from Scotland’s collaborative approach, bringing together enforcing agencies and other stakeholders to tackle fly-tipping. The Scottish Government set up a national Environmental Crime Taskforce in 2013, which co-ordinates the efforts of local authorities, regulators, police and other stakeholders in tackling environmental crime, including waste crime. There are tools, and there is guidance to support them. For example, Zero Waste Scotland has created the FlyMapper tool for local authorities and land managers, which lets stakeholders report and map fly-tipping, identifying growing “grot spots” in real time.

Those are all good initiatives, but the petition to stop waste and plastic misuse gives a better option for the consumer by highlighting the need to prevent the problem from happening in the first place by going to the source: the manufacturing stage. I love that the petition acknowledges that change is required and suggests that supermarkets be put under scrutiny to ensure they are taking their corporate responsibilities seriously. That would be welcome.

To finish, I want to offer something personal. In my family, we like dirty carrots. My mother is 97, and when I go out she wants dirty carrots brought back. She does not want anything wrapped in plastic. We try to do exactly the same: we use locally grown produce, particularly from farm shops, markets and our local independent greengrocers. It is good practice. We know it cuts down on emissions and helps the local economy thrive. I am all for enabling local, independent greengrocers to thrive.