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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the importance of investment in chemical recycling for delivering a circular economy in the plastics sector.

In the Resources and Waste Strategy, we have committed to taking actions which will help to stimulate private investment in recycling infrastructure. Chemical recycling offers a potential complementary route for plastic recycling where mechanical recycling is impractical or uneconomic and we continue to consider how chemical recycling could play a role in ensuring more of our plastic waste is recycled domestically to meet our ambition of a 65% recycling rate by 2035. WRAP recently published an updated plastic waste hierarchy which references chemical recycling and its potential for offering a complementary recycling route to mechanical recycling for certain plastics. The Government has also funded innovative demonstrator projects, including on chemical recycling, through UKRI’s Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging programme.