Plastic Bottles and Coffee Cups

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has taken us a slight distance away from the subject at hand, but I must say that I am always willing to listen to any discussion about disposable Japanese chopsticks. On water fountains, when she looks around the Chamber, is she not as horrified as I am to see these carafes and glasses of water? Would it not be an excellent idea to have a water fountain adjacent to the Speaker’s Chair, and perhaps one opposite each of the Front Benches, with disposable, biodegradable cups? Let us start as we mean to go on and let this place be an example to the nation.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

I think we will carry on using glasses, which are absolutely environmentally friendly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Sobel]

We certainly do not want to see boatloads of dirty waste, so I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We also need a complete audit of our PERN system and should look at reform. If we are to export plastic, which I do not actually agree with, we need to know that it will be recycled when it arrives at its destination.

Although the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) is not in his place, I want to thank him. I have a copy of his letter, which I read carefully this morning. The recommendations of the Administration Committee are not only recommendations for this House; they are recommendations that the Government should consider and which present a holistic approach to tackling the use of plastic. The letter mentions ending sales of plastic water bottles. It also includes the latte levy, which we will not have outside this place, but we will have here. The Committee proposes that we incentivise the use of reusable cups through loyalty rewards and that we get rid of condiment sachets. I was amazed to read how much sauce we eat in this place. We consume 334,800 sachets of sauce a year; we are a saucy lot in this House. I thank the Administration Committee and hope that the Government take on some of its saucy suggestions.

[Stephen Pound]

It is HP Sauce.

[Alex Sobel]

Absolutely.

I feel a lot of personal responsibility in this area. I recently visited I Am Döner, my local kebab shop in Headingley, where I ordered my normal falafel wrap. Its staff told me that they have gone completely plastic-free. They provide water in cans and all their packaging is non-plastic. That shop is an exemplar to us all. I thank Paul at I Am Döner for introducing those measures. He has inspired me to have a week in which I do not buy any single-use plastic, so I will be bombarding hon. Members from my social media accounts regarding my difficulties in avoiding any single-use plastics. I hope that the Administration Committee can hurry up with implementing its proposals so that I can eat here without having to use any single-use plastic. We all need to make a personal commitment, as well as pressing for change from the Government.