Litter: Tobacco

(asked on 1st June 2020) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of (a) the Extended Producer Responsibility scheme for tobacco products with filters that is being introduced in the EU and (b) adopting a similar model to that scheme in the UK.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 10th June 2020

Figures from the Great British Beach Clean 2019 report that cigarette stubs were the second most frequently-found type of litter item on UK beaches, with an average of 42.6 stubs found per 100 metres. UK Government scientists are currently carrying out chemical and toxicological experiments to evaluate the potential harm caused to the marine environment by cigarette stubs. This work will be published by 2022.

The Government has made no specific recent assessment of the UK tobacco industry's contribution to tackling smoking-related litter. I refer honourable members to the answer I gave on 23 March to PQ 29305: https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Commons/2020-03-13/29305/.

The Government would like to see the tobacco industry delivering on the commitment given by the Tobacco Manufacturers' Association to tackle the litter created by its products and their users. The Government supports ongoing efforts by Keep Britain Tidy (KBT). KBT works in partnership with the tobacco industry to devise a voluntary scheme through which the industry can contribute to the clean-up of cigarette related litter.

Clause 48 in Section 3 of the Environment Bill also grants powers to introduce extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes. In the Resources and Waste Strategy, we committed to looking into and consulting on EPR for five new waste-streams by 2025, and consulting on two of these by 2022. Waste tobacco filters were not included in this list of priorities but progress on the industry's voluntary approach to litter reduction will be monitored.

Tobacco packaging is covered by the current producer responsibility regulations, which require companies to recycle a proportion of the packaging waste they place on the market. Producers of tobacco packaging will also be subject to the forthcoming EPR scheme for packaging which will cover the full net costs of managing packaging at its end of life. In our consultation we proposed that producer fees should cover the full cost to local authorities of dealing with littered and fly-tipped packaging waste.

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