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 trends in the levels of recycling rates for (a) plastic, (b) metal and (c) glass beverage containers.

Defra has not made an assessment of trends in the levels of recycling rates for plastic, metal and glass beverage containers.

However, Defra’s Impact Assessment for the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) uses external estimates of the recycling rates for beverage containers made of specific materials for specific years –

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukia/2024/217/pdfs/ukia_20240217_en.pdf

Defra more routinely publishes annual statistics on the total amount of UK packaging waste that is recycled broken down by material types. The following table shows the amount of packing waste recycled by material types for 2023. The amount of recycled packaging is based on tonnages reported by accredited reprocessors and exporters under the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations.

Table1: Packaging waste and recycling, split by material, UK 2023 (thousand tonnes and % rate)

Notes

* ‘Other’ includes materials such as cloth, corks, gel, glue, hessian sacks and wax used as packaging

Arisings estimates made at point of manufacture.

UK packaging waste figures by material types for 2012 to 2023 can be found in the UK statistics on waste dataset: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-waste-data.