Packaging: Extended Producer Responsibility

Matt Western Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Anna McMorrin]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that excellent point. That is absolutely what we are seeing, and we have to stop it by fundamentally reforming the system.

We have seen growing public awareness of the problems with waste, especially since the broadcast of David Attenborough’s “Blue Planet II”. Three quarters of a billion people worldwide watched that harrowing footage of albatross parents feeding their chicks plastic, mother dolphins potentially exposing their new-born calves to pollutants through contaminated milk, and the whale with a bucket caught in its mouth. Those images were hard-hitting, but necessary to bring about change.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making important points on this critical subject. I, too, want to pay tribute to the BBC natural history unit, which is based in Bristol, for its extraordinary work. Back in 2007, it highlighted this problem in the Midway Islands in the Pacific, where we saw the plastic debris that was being found among the dead birds there. I should also like to emphasise the point that things can be done. Companies such as Fortress Recycling in Leamington recycle a great deal of plastic, but black plastic is a real problem for them.

[Anna McMorrin]

My hon. Friend is completely correct. We have to find ways of recycling all waste, or of limiting its use. That is at the heart of the change that we need to make. “Blue Planet II” has inspired changes up and down the nation, with people increasingly moving from single-use plastic bottles to reusable bottles, increasing their use of travel cups and moving away from plastic straws and cutlery.