Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment he has made of the (a) adequacy and (b) effectiveness of systems for recycling plastics.

The UK continues to be a global leader in tackling plastic waste, and our ambition is to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste. Our landmark Resources and Waste Strategy sets out how we want to achieve this and move towards a more circular economy.

Following support in our 2019 consultation on ‘Consistency in household and business recycling collections in England,’ we will introduce legislation through the Environment Bill that will require a core set of recyclable materials, including plastics, to be collected from households and businesses by all waste collectors in England.

We will also introduce measures to encourage producers to use plastic packaging that can be recycled through reforms of Extended Producer Responsibility and the introduction of a deposit return scheme for drinks containers, including plastic bottles.

We encourage the development of infrastructure for plastic reprocessing to ensure the UK meets its recycling targets as well as supporting the major waste reforms. The plastic packaging tax is expected to increase demand for secondary material plastic and increasing reprocessing infrastructure will help meet this demand. Reprocessing infrastructure enables the value of resource use to be maximised as well as waste arisings and its impact on the environment to be minimised.