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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing auditable tracking for products and packaging to assist with the enforcement of rules on litter and flytipping.

The Litter Strategy sets out how we intend to work with the relevant industries to tackle certain types of problematic litter, such as fast food packaging, and our Resources and Waste Strategy set our strategic approach to prevent, detect and deter waste crime, including fly-tipping.

The Resources and Waste Strategy commits us to introducing mandatory electronic waste tracking, subject to consultation. This will help to ensure that waste is dealt with appropriately and will reduce the incidence of waste crime and fly-tipping.

No formal assessment has been made of the potential merits of introducing auditable tracking for packaging. However, exploratory discussions suggest that the burden on businesses and enforcement bodies, along with data protection issues, would mean the costs could outweigh the benefits of such a policy.

We are exploring other measures to tackle littered packaging. Our recently published consultation on extended producer responsibility for packaging proposes that producers who make or handle consumer-facing packaging should fund the full net-costs associated with the packaging they place on the market once it becomes waste, including litter-related costs. We have also recently launched our consultation on the deposit return scheme, which will incentivise proper disposal of in-scope material by consumers. We will continue to engage with producers as these measures come forward.

In recent years, to support local authorities in their enforcement, Defra has bolstered local authorities’ powers to tackle fly-tipping, such as by introducing the power to issue fixed penalty notices (including to householders who pass their waste to an unlicensed waste carrier) and to stop and seize vehicles of suspected fly-tippers. We have also introduced new powers to allow penalties to be issued to the keeper of a vehicle from which litter is thrown (recognising that it is often difficult to identify the individual who threw the litter), and published guidance on the use of enforcement powers for littering and related offences.