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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make it his policy to ban single use plastic in food packaging.

Plastic has an important role to play in certain applications and we must think carefully about how we solve the problems that arise from plastic waste in order to avoid unintended consequences.

Therefore, we intend to take forward the proposals set out in HM Government Response to the consultation on packaging extended producer responsibility and to introduce measures to incentivise producers to make better, more sustainable decisions in their design and use of packaging and to require more packaging to be recycled at end of use.

For particularly problematic packaging items, we are seeking to go further. We have recently consulted on proposals to ban expanded and extruded polystyrene food and beverage containers, including cups.

Businesses are also seeking to go further. In April 2018, WRAP and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation launched their world-leading UK Plastics Pact, with support from HM Government, and all the major supermarkets have signed up to it. The Pact brings organisations from across the plastics value chain together with four key targets for 2025 that aim to reduce the amount of plastic packaging waste generated. These targets include action to eliminate problematic or unnecessary single-use plastic packaging items.