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

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to improve methods to measure the amount and types of microplastic and microfibres in rivers, lakes, seas and their sediments.

Defra intends to publish a report that it commissioned on improving the sampling and analytical protocols to determine the quantities, loads and types of microplastics in surface waters and sediments, later this year. Following this, working with the Environment Agency, Defra will consider the approaches to sampling surface waters and sediments to develop provisional standard operating procedure guidelines that will be used to improve sampling, processing and analysing of microplastics in river waters and sediments.