Last week, the Government announced a series of reforms to boost recycling, tackle plastic pollution and reduce litter.
Ministers have already taken steps to ban microbeads, cut supermarket sales of single-use plastic bags by 95 per cent (taking 15bn plastic bags out of circulation since 2015), and ban the sale of plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds. We will now be taking forward work on:
- A new Deposit Return Scheme for drinks containers: consumers will be incentivised to take their empty drinks containers to return points hosted by retailers. Every year across the UK, consumers go through an estimated 14 billion plastic drinks bottles, nine billion drinks cans and five billion glass bottles.
- Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging: manufacturers will pay the full costs of managing and recycling their packaging waste, with higher fees being levied if packaging is harder to reuse or recycle. In 2019, approximately 11.7 million tonnes of packaging was placed on the UK market.
The third of our major reforms will see the introduction of consistent recycling collections for all households and businesses in England. This will also be going out to consultation shortly.
I will also be organising new litter picks around the constituency once rules on social distancing allow, starting with Lingfield and Woldingham. And I'll be writing to McDonald’s, where a large amount of litter seems to come from, to ask them what they are doing to inform their customers not to litter. We all have to play our part if we want to make a change.
