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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what his plans are for protecting the environment from intentionally and non-intentionally added microplastics.

Our priority is preventing plastic from entering the environment in the first place, be that the freshwater, marine or terrestrial environment. In 2018 the UK launched one the world’s toughest bans on the sale and manufacture of microbeads in rinse-off personal care products, helping to prevent billions of tiny plastic pieces from entering the ocean every year. This ban was developed based on evidence of harm to the marine environment from microplastics, and specifically evidence of microbeads directly entering the marine environment through the water treatment process. It aimed to create a level playing field between businesses that had already taken voluntary action and those that continued to use microbeads.

Pre-production plastic pellets are another major source of microplastics with between 5-53 billion pellets lost every year during the production of plastic in the UK. We support Operation Clean Sweep, an international initiative coordinated in the UK by the British Plastics Federation which aims to reduce plastic pellet loss to the environment. At the British-Irish Council Marine Litter Symposium in 2019, Ministers from all Administrations recognised the need to reduce the loss of pre-production plastic pellets and committed to learn from a trial supply-chain approach in Scotland which was completed in 2020 and can be found here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/preventing-plastic-pollution-pellet-loss-taking-supply-chain-approach-reduce-pollution-waste/