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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps the Government is taking to reduce (a) plastic packaging consumer waste and (b) other forms of pollution in the River Thames.

The Government has taken a number of steps to reduce the amount of consumer plastic packaging waste ending up in the natural environment, including in the River Thames, by reducing the amount of plastic packaging placed on the market, increasing the amount that is recycled, and reducing litter.

These include the UK’s Packaging Waste Regulations, which both put an obligation on producers to ensure that a proportion of the packaging they handle is recovered and recycled and require that packaging should not exceed what is needed to ensure that products are safe, hygienic and acceptable to the consumer.

Working with the Waste and Resources Action Programme, a number of activities support recyclability and reducing packaging waste. The industry led Plastics Industry Recycling Action Plan also identified actions across the whole supply chain to increase the amount of plastic packaging waste recycled sustainably.

The Government’s Litter Strategy for England will also help to improve the way we all tackle the scourge of litter. To develop the Litter Strategy we are working with a range of interested stakeholders, including representatives from the Marine Conversation Society, Thames21 and the Canals and Rivers Trust.

In terms of other forms of pollution, the Environment Agency controls pollution from discharges of treated sewage, industrial effluent and storm sewage overflows into the River Thames using environmental permits under the Environmental Permitting Regulations 2010. The Environment Agency also leads the development of River Basin Management Plans setting statutory environmental objectives for all our waters, including the River Thames, which were revised last year.

Finally, the Thames Tideway Tunnel will significantly reduce the current high volumes of untreated sewage that regularly overflow into the River Thames through London at times of even moderate rainfall.