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 is taking to ensure that the recycling symbol is (a) highly visible, (b) unambiguous and (c) on the front of packaging.

On 18 February the Government published a consultation on changes to the producer responsibility regime for packaging. As part of this consultation we have proposed a mandatory UK-wide labelling scheme which would require producers to clearly label their packaging as ‘recyclable’ or ‘not-recyclable’. This proposal will ensure the packaging labelling scheme will be: (a) highly visible, (b) unambiguous and (c) on the front of packaging.

The consultation closed on 13 May and we are currently analysing the responses. A summary of responses will be published in due course.

The details of the proposed mandatory packaging labelling scheme, such as the design of the label, will be subject to further consultation.