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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what reason closed loop recycling systems are not being recognised until 2025 for those manufacturers who have already put in place sustainable processes; and for what reason closed loop recycling incentives will not include meal trays.

Under Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging (pEPR), producers who collect and recycle consumer packaging waste at their own cost, where it is not commonly collected by local authorities for recycling, will be able to reduce their obligation to pay fees to cover the costs of managing household packaging from 2024. This is intended to support our transition to higher recycling rates as we invest in improved collection, sorting and recycling systems for hard to recycle packaging, or transition to using packaging that is already widely recyclable. Packaging that is already commonly collected from households will not be eligible for this offset as this would reduce the efficiency of household collections and increase the risk of fraud, except where it is part of an established re-use system where the same item of packaging is collected, cleaned and re-used multiple times before being recycled. This will provide an added incentive for producers to move to systems of re-useable packaging.