To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent steps has she taken to help reduce plastic pollution.
Answered on
24 November 2022
We have made significant progress, introducing one of the world's toughest bans on microbeads in rinse-off personal care products and brought in measures to restrict the supply of plastic straws and plastic drink stirrers, and banning plastic-stemmed cotton buds in October 2020. The use of single-use carrier bags has been reduced in the main supermarkets by over 97% with our 10p charge.
We recently consulted on proposals to ban the supply of single-use plastic plates, cutlery, and balloon sticks, and expanded and extruded polystyrene food and beverage containers, including cups. We are committed to going further and addressing other sources of plastic pollution, which is why we also ran a call for evidence to help us gather information on other problematic plastic items.
Our Environment Act (2021) enables us to significantly change the way that we manage our plastic waste, including powers to create extended producer responsibility schemes; introduce deposit return schemes; establish greater consistency in the recycling system; better control the export of plastic waste; and gives us the power to set new charges for other single-use items.