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 has taken to encourage businesses to (a) improve the recyclability of their products including plastic aluminium laminates and (b) reduce waste sent to landfill.

In our 2018 Resources and Waste Strategy we committed to review and consult on measures such as extended producer responsibility and standards for a number of products, starting with packaging.

In 2019 we consulted on proposals to reform the UK’s current packaging producer responsibility system. Government’s aim through this reform is to reduce the amount of unnecessary and difficult to recycle packaging and increase the amount of packaging that is recycled. Measures being considered to drive increased recycling through the reformed system include requiring producers to fund the full net costs of managing packaging once it becomes waste, setting higher recycling targets on producers and basing producer ‘disposal’ cost fees on the design and recyclability of packaging, making hard to recycle packaging more expensive to use.

We are taking new powers in the Environment Bill to enable us to introduce extended producer responsibility, as well as taking powers in the Bill on resource efficiency to enable government to set minimum standards for products, and to introduce requirements for improved labelling and consumer information focused on, for example, recyclability and recycled content.

We are also taking new powers in the Environment Bill to require waste collectors in England to collect a number of recyclable waste streams from households and businesses. We plan to undertake second consultations on extended producer responsibility for packaging and on consistency in recycling in 2021. Plastic aluminium laminated packaging will be in scope of each. Through achieving outcomes including improving resource efficiency and incentivising the recycling of packaging waste these proposals will contribute to reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill.

In addition, in October 2020 we introduced a statutory permit condition for landfill and incineration permit holders stating they must not accept waste paper, metal, plastic or glass that has been separately collected for the purpose of preparing for re-use or recycling, unless the waste results from the treatment of that material and landfill/ incineration delivers the best environmental outcome, in accordance with the waste hierarchy.