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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to reduce the use of single use plastics; and what assessment his Department has made of the benefits of a target of 50 per cent reduction by 2025.

The Government's 25 Year Environment Plan sets out our ambition to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste by the end of 2042, including from single-use plastics. We are making great strides to tackle plastic pollution across the country. In December 2018 we published the Resources and Waste Strategy, which sets out how we want to achieve this and move towards a circular economy and keep resources in the system for as long as possible.

We have made significant progress on reducing single-use plastic products. In October 2020, we introduced measures to restrict the supply of plastic straws, plastic drink stirrers, and plastic-stemmed cotton buds. The single-use carrier bag charge, which has led to a 95% reduction in the use of single-use carrier bags by the main supermarkets, has been increased to 10p and extended to all retailers to encourage customers to bring their own bags to carry shopping and reduce the volumes of single-use plastic being used. We will continue to review the latest evidence on problematic products and materials to take a systematic approach to reducing the use of unnecessary single-use plastic products, including problematic packaging materials. However, we must think carefully about introducing bans and other policy solutions to avoid unintended consequences, such as a switch to another single-use material.

Our Environment Bill will enable us to significantly change the way we manage waste and take forward a number of proposals from the Resources and Waste Strategy. The Bill will include powers to create Extended Producer Responsibility schemes, introduce Deposit Return Schemes, and give us the power to set new charges for other single-use plastic items. Our consultations on an EPR scheme for packaging and a DRS for drinks containers closed on 4 June. From April 2022, we will introduce a new tax on plastic packaging, set at £200 per tonne for packaging that does not contain at least 30% recycled content. The tax is estimated to lead to around 40% more recycled plastic being used in packaging in 2022/23, saving nearly 200,000 tonnes of CO2. In effect a tonne of recycled plastic will be over £600 more valuable. This will create a market for recycled content, which we expect to drive investment in further capacity in the UK.

The Government has put together a package of over £100 million for research and innovation to tackle the issues that arise from plastic waste. £38 million was set aside through the Plastics Research and Innovation Fund, the last funding competition of which opened in June 2020.  The Resource Action Fund included £10 million specifically to pioneer innovative approaches to boosting recycling and reducing litter. The Government has also announced £60 million of funding through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, alongside a £150 million investment from industry, towards the development of smart, sustainable plastic packaging (SSPP), which will aim to make the UK a world leader in sustainable packaging for consumer products. Two SSPP funding opportunities have been open for bids in 2021: the SSPP Demonstrator Round 2 and the SSPP business-led research and development competition.

The Department has not made an assessment of the impact of a target to reduce single-use plastics by 50% by 2025. However, the Environment Bill includes a requirement for the Government to set at least one long-term target on resource efficiency and waste reduction. Work is already underway on developing these targets, in order to help guide the government the Resources and Waste Targets Expert Group has been formed. More information can be found at:  https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/resources-and-waste-targets-expert-group.

Moreover, the Government is exploring packaging recycling targets under our proposals for extended producer responsibility for packaging. The consultation on our more detailed proposals closed on 4 June 2021.