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

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the publication of Our waste, our resources: a strategy for England on 18 December 2018, what support they intend to provide local authorities to help them improve recycling rates for hard-to-recycle materials.

In the 25 Year Environment Plan we set out our commitment to accelerate the move to consistency in the materials collected for recycling. Our consultation, ‘Consistency in Household and Business Recycling Collections in England,’ which closes on 13 May, seeks views on waste collectors collecting a set of core materials for recycling from homes and businesses. Waste generated by households and businesses can however include materials that are ‘difficult to recycle’. Waste composition is expected to change over time and recycling technology is expected to improve. The core set of materials collected by local authorities therefore may need to change to include materials that were in the past ‘difficult to recycle’. Any new burdens on local authorities will be funded by the Government, though it is expected that the secondary market for plastics will be stimulated by the reform of the current packaging regulations as set out in the Resources and Waste strategy and the proposed plastic packaging tax.

Taken together, these measures will help to reduce the amount of hard to recycle materials in waste and to increase recycling overall.