Plastic Pollution in the Ocean

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 18th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) for securing this debate. I will spend a few moments thinking about the local, national and international aspects of plastic pollution in the oceans.

Turning first to local things, plastic pollution in my part of Devon is being dealt with by enthusiastic activists. We have a brilliant team of volunteers called Plastic Free Seaton, and while many of us were recovering from the King’s coronation celebrations on 8 May, they were celebrating the national day of volunteering. When some of us were perhaps clearing up disposable plastic plates or polystyrene cups, the group, including Seaton’s scouts and guides, were out there in the rain on Seaton beach doing brilliant work clearing up the waste that had been left behind.

Looking beyond Seaton, we have similar initiatives such as Plastic Free Ottery and Turn Lyme Green. Thinking about the point made about fishermen and our seas, the fishing fleet at Beer would desperately like us to deal with the issue better. I also pay tribute to Sidmouth Plastic Warriors and the excellent campaigning force that is Denise Bickley. She and others have gathered a group of 724 people in Sidmouth who regularly clean up our beaches, and they will be doing so at Sea Fest this Saturday afternoon.

As national legislators, we should be thinking global and acting local. The hon. Member for North Devon pointed out that 80% of marine plastic comes from the land, and that is not just true of desirable items—those plastic things we might want to use—but occasionally true of those things that we do not want. For example, anyone who finds a parking penalty attached to their car will see that it is wrapped in plastic.

The particular scourge that I want to discuss this afternoon is cigarette butts. Cigarette butts contain a filter that is made of a polymer called cellulose acetate, which breaks down in the sea and contributes to the microplastics that we have heard so much about. I have heard the argument that filters are there for a reason, and we might suppose there are health benefits to the smoker. However, the science I have read suggests that one of the reasons cigarette companies use plastic filters is to keep the cigarette rigid. In economics, there is a concept called moral hazard, whereby if someone is told that there is a mitigating factor in what they are doing, they might do more of it. I think that is true of smoking through a filter. If someone thinks the filter is protecting their health, they might be inclined to smoke more cigarettes. It might, therefore, actually be worse for public health than not having a plastic filter at all.

We have heard about the damage to our marine life, and cigarette butts also play a role in that. A cigarette butt will tend to float on the surface of the sea, and sea life will mistake it for a morsel of food and ingest it. We might think that vaping is the future and somehow the solution, but even single-use vaping products have hardened plastic and disposable cartridges. On the subject of smoking and vaping, we have to think about producer responsibility, where the producer has to pay.

We have talked about the local and national contexts. The Liberal Democrats are calling for a more ambitious target: the end of non-essential single-use plastics by 2025. We would like to see the ban on stirrers and cutlery to be extended to polystyrene plates and, in the fullness of time, cups as well. We would like to see the creation of an independent advisory committee on plastics pollution to advise the Government on policy and dates for the phasing out of various types of plastic. The Liberal Democrats are calling for a more ambitious target for addressing plastic pollution than that set out in the Government’s Environment Act 2021, which in many respects will not be enforced until 2037.

Above all, I would like to see an end to plastic exports. Although we can talk about what we would like to do on regulation and legislation in the UK, this is a global problem. Given that the oceans account for 70% of the surface of the planet, we need to ensure that we are not causing harm overseas as well as in our own country. I am curious to hear from the Minister whether the Government wish to introduce regulations on cigarette butts, given that I have heard from people working for a plastic-pollution-free east Devon that it is cigarette butts that are a particular scourge for our beaches in the west country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Foord]

The Minister says that the Government have already taken account of the proposals I talked about on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. Does that include the points I made about cigarette butts? Will she tell us what the Government are doing to crack down on cigarette butts in the ocean?

[Rebecca Pow]

Yes. I have spent a lot of time working on cigarette butts as well. They are a nasty, poisonous, polluting litter item. In fact, in terms of numbers of items littered, they are the largest. A lot of work has been done on that front. We work very closely with WRAP—the Waste and Resources Action Programme—on options for tackling the littering of cigarette butts, which include making the industry more responsible for the cost of dealing with them. We are considering next steps now. The hon. Member may not be aware that, with the stick hanging over the industry, it has come up with £30 million to voluntarily deal with cigarette butt littering. We will watch closely to see how that proceeds.

In October 2020, we introduced measures to restrict the supply of plastic straws, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) mentioned, as well as plastic drink stirrers and plastic-stemmed cotton buds, which we did ahead of the EU. We are building on that progress with our recently announced bans on single-use plastic plates, bowls, trays, containers, cutlery and balloon sticks from this October. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent reminded us, quite starkly, why we need to do this—those things stay in the environment for so long; she gave the figure of 400 years. We are doing absolutely the right thing in bringing in those bans. As time progresses, we will review those bans to see whether they are effective and to make sure that we have the right processes in place—I think the shadow Minister asked about that.

The form of marine litter with the greatest known impact on marine life is abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear, known as ghost gear. That has been estimated to cause a decline of between 5% and 30% in some fish stocks. The Administrations of the UK are committed to working together, and with industry, through the British Irish Council, to develop solutions for the collection and recycling of end-of-life fishing gear—the gear left lying about on the quayside—of which there is a large quantity. To fulfil that commitment, the UK is reviewing domestic measures for end-of-life fishing and aquaculture gear with the intention of moving the sector towards a circular economy model, finding ways to recycle that material. It is quite complicated, because the gear contains a lot of different materials. We will ensure that any new requirements do not create a competitive disadvantage for our fishing industry.

Regional sea conventions can also play a key role in co-ordinating action, sharing knowledge and monitoring the state of the ocean, and as a contracting party to OSPAR—the regional seas convention for the protection of the north-east Atlantic—the UK participates in monitoring programmes to assess regional trends in marine litter and develops and takes action in co-operation with our nearest neighbours. In 2021, OSPAR contracting parties agreed the north-east Atlantic environment strategy. The strategy has a number of objectives on tackling marine litter in the north-east Atlantic, including a strategic objective to prevent inputs of, and significantly reduce, marine litter, including microplastics in the marine environment. Under the strategic objective, contracting parties also agreed to publish an updated regional action plan on marine litter, which was published in 2022.

The strong programme of domestic and regional action means that the UK is well placed to be a leading voice in tackling plastic pollution on the wider international stage. The UK was proud to co-sponsor the proposal to prepare a new international, legally binding plastic pollution treaty, which was agreed in the United Nations Environment Assembly in February 2022.