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 his Department has made of how businesses and manufacturers can reduce the microplastics in (a) personal care products and (b) clothes.

Microbeads have been banned in rinse-off personal care and cleaning products since 2018. We encourage businesses not to add them into any products that are out of scope of the ban.

The Government’s Resources & Waste Strategy for England (2018) identified textiles as one of five priority sectors for consideration of an Extended Producer Responsibility scheme and product standards. Our draft Waste Prevention Programme for England, consulted on in March 2021, affirms this commitment and sets out our approach to develop policy options.

We are working closely with industry via Textiles 2030, an industry-led voluntary agreement (managed by WRAP), which is underpinned by ambitious science-based targets, including halving the carbon footprint of new products by 50% by 2030 and reducing the water footprint by 30% by 2030. The Microfibre Consortium is a signatory to the initiative and WRAP is working with the Consortium on the Textiles 2030 Roadmap.