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 help ensure that there is better separation of recyclable materials at source to minimise the contamination of flexible plastic waste by food waste.

In our second consultation on 'Consistency in Household and Business Recycling in England' we consulted on proposals to require plastic films and flexible packaging be included in household and business recycling collections. We also asked for views on how plastic films should be collected to avoid contamination of other recyclables, contamination with food and to make sorting easier. The consultation closed on 4th July and we will publish our response in due course.

Through consistent household collections and extended producer responsibility in the Environment Bill, alongside measures such as the plastic packaging tax, we will significantly support the market for all plastics recycling, including flexibles, giving businesses the confidence to invest in enhanced domestic capacity. In pursuit of this, the government, through the UK Research and Innovation Industrial Strategy Challenge, has also invested £20m into four plastics reprocessing facilities to develop new technologies in this area.