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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to increase the rate of household waste recycling rate to meet the EU Waste Framework Directive target of 50 per cent by 2020.

The Government is committed to meeting the 2020 EU recycling target of 50% of household waste. Local authorities deliver local recycling services, and householders have played a key role in increasing the England’s recycling rate to 44.9% in 2016/17.

The 25 Year Environment Plan sets out our commitment to make it easier for people to recycle to increase the quantity and quality of materials collected. Through the Framework for Greater Consistency, WRAP is working with industry and local authorities to ensure that a consistent set of core materials are collected by all local authorities. We want to accelerate this process and want householders to benefit from having comprehensive and frequent waste and recycling collections which protect local amenity and ensure that products are recycled as much as possible, returning high quality materials back to the economy.