Environment Bill - Committee (4th Day) – in the House of Lords at 8:45 pm on 30 June 2021.
Moved by Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
130A: Schedule 7, page 175, line 30, leave out “or supply” and insert “, supply or use in the supply chain”Member’s explanatory statementThese amendment seeks greater transparency on the part of supermarkets in terms of plastic packaging.
In moving Amendment 130A, I shall speak also to Amendments 130B and 141A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, and Amendment 139, in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville. As with the various other amendments in this group, they seek concrete, practical steps to reduce plastic pollution, primarily by reducing plastic production. What is not produced in the first place cannot later pollute.
Amendments 130A and 130B seek to strengthen the Bill to enforce full transparency from businesses with more than 250 employees about the plastic they use at every point in the supply chain. We are not wedded to that threshold, but it is the same one used by the Government; for example, as a threshold for making declarations on the gender pay gap. A threshold of that order means that we are not imposing huge burdens on tiny companies but just asking a small thing of the large companies which are the primary plastic polluters.
UK supermarkets use some 114 billion pieces of throwaway plastic packaging each year. Anti-plastic campaigners A Plastic Planet have worked out that this equates to 653,000 tonnes of plastic waste—the equivalent of almost 3,000 747 jumbo jets.
This avalanche of plastic is not just in the packaging we take home with us from the supermarket. It wraps pallets of food in transit, and it sits on shelves, wrapping pretty much everything we buy, pushing sales while creating a toxic legacy for our planet. That is why Amendment 130B refers to
“primary, secondary and tertiary plastic packaging”,
which is the jargon, respectively, for packaging we take home, packaging used to promote sales and packaging used to transport goods before products make it to the shelves.
There is a market leader in this connection. The Minister referred to it on our first day in Committee. Back in September 2020, Iceland called on the retail sector to join it in improving transparency on plastic use. Working with campaign groups, including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, A Plastic Planet and Surfers Against Sewage, the chain has also called on the Government to use the Bill to enforce mandatory reporting on plastic packaging, and plastic pollution reduction targets.
The supermarket argued that, without transparent reporting and government-enforced reduction targets, we will not be able to judge whether business actions are delivering real progress in tackling plastic pollution. Iceland went on to call for retailers and other businesses to commit to publishing their total plastic packaging transparently, including both own-label and branded products. Although many supermarkets have signed pacts and pledges, they have so far failed to make a significant impact on the amount of plastic polluting the environment.
The amendments recognise that voluntary reporting in itself is insufficient. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts and SYSTEMIQ report, Breaking the Plastic Wave, released this year, voluntary agreements will see at most a 7% reduction in the forecast growth in ocean pollution by 2040. This is clearly inadequate, so reporting requirements with legal force are needed.
Consumers are consistently behind us in wanting a reduction in the use of plastic. They are inclined to buy plastic-free products and reward companies that seek alternatives. We simply need to give them more choice. These transparency amendments are therefore about empowering consumers to see who are the plastic heroes and villains. We can then trust that consumers will vote with their feet, support the market leaders and, in doing so, encouraging the laggards to catch up. It is a neat solution, and I hope the Government will respond constructively to it.
Amendment 141A is more straightforward still. It deals with the scourge of plastic sachets. These little single-use, single-dose sachets have somehow slipped beneath all the single-use plastic radars and policies. The most recent global audit of branded plastic waste revealed that sachets were the most commonly found item, ahead of cigarette butts and plastic bottles. The UK has rightly banned plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds. Sachets must be next.
In the long run, the campaigners in this space want an end to all conventional plastic sachets, including for such foodstuffs as ketchup. However, the amendment is more modest, recognising that while we emerge from Covid, there are still sensitivities in catering environments about people touching the same ketchup bottle, and so forth.
A ban on cosmetic and household sachets is where we should start. Polling commissioned by A Plastic Planet revealed overwhelming support for such a move. Almost eight in 10 Britons say that plastic sample sachets should be banned in the UK, and more than four in five say that the Government should not ignore their impact on plastic pollution. There is political support for this too. In November 2020, some 40 politicians, business leaders and campaigners signed an open letter which urged the UK and EU to include sample sachets in their single-use plastic bans. Signatories of the letter included Princess Esméralda of Belgium, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean, Peter Thomson, Iceland Foods managing director Richard Walker and Time Out Group CEO Julio Bruno, as well as 27 parliamentarians across party lines.
It is clear that this is an area where the UK, outside the EU, could lead Europe rather than lag behind. Industry knows that we should moving toward more and more refillable solutions, with consumers taking their bottles back to the shop rather than buying more packaging that is then thrown in the bin.
I also add my support to Amendment 139 in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, to which I have added my name. It amends the provision in Schedule 9 to ensure that charges can be imposed not just on single-use plastic items but on all single-use items; otherwise, there is a danger of shifting the environmental burden from one polluting material to another. The problem lies with the single-use throwaway culture, not just plastic per se. In fact, a recent Green Alliance report set out that switching all plastic packaging on a like-for-like basis could almost triple associated carbon emissions. So an inability to charge for alternatives to plastic might see the market switch to other unnecessary single-use items rather than driving down consumption.
I turn finally to Amendments 141 and 142 to 145 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. Again, these press the Government to make a distinction in their handling of plastics between compostable materials on the one hand and conventional polluting plastic on the other. This seems to us a pragmatic way to proceed, recognising that only by promoting a range of solutions—including reducing plastic production, reusing plastics that can be reused, recycling plastics that can be recycled and composting—will we meet the demands of the plastic crisis.
Transparency from the supermarkets about their own footprint and a ban on the scourge of sachets could be two major contributors alongside the other amendments in this group. I therefore beg to move.
My Lords, I applaud the Government’s determination to drive down the single use of plastics. Clause 54 and its associated Schedule 9 will do a useful job in reducing plastic pollution by introducing a charge on the use of single-use plastics, but Amendment 139 aims to push the Government to be braver and go further with the Bill. I also support the wish to make the use of plastics more transparent in Amendments 130A and 130B.
The lockdown and its subsequent easing have shown us all the dangers of allowing the single-use culture to flourish. I, like many other noble Lords, was appalled when we ordered online delivery shopping during lockdown to find so many of our purchases wrapped in sheaths and sheaths of paper inside a huge cardboard box—all of which had to be thrown away. Many noble Lords have expressed their horror at the litter left behind in our parks and streets as lockdown eased. That litter is not just plastic. It is also wooden cutlery, aluminium cans and paper bags, all of which are used just once and then discarded and all of which despoils our countryside and urban spaces.
On day two of Committee, the Minister said:
“For the long-term legally binding target on waste reduction and resource efficiency, we want to take a more holistic approach to reduce consumption, not just of plastic, but of all materials. This would increase resource productivity and reduce the volume of waste we generate overall”.—[Official Report, 23/6/21; col. 255.]
Does the Minister stand by that statement? If so, will he support the holistic approach demanded by this amendment? That holistic approach means that, although the campaign to reduce plastics must be supported, it cannot be carried out at the expense of driving manufacturers and consumers into substituting them with other single-use materials, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, just warned us.
As it stands, Schedule 9 risks creating a situation where single-use plastic will be replaced by other environmentally damaging materials. I have already mentioned that paper is being used extensively for packaging, bags and cups, and wood is being used for cutlery. It is not always possible to determine the provenance of all paper and wood. Not all our pulp for imported paper comes from the EU and the USA. Annually, more than 750,000 hectares of timber—equivalent to nearly half the size of Wales—is imported into the UK from China, Russia and Brazil, where there is a high risk of deforestation and a threat to biodiversity. The paper manufacturing process increases the use of chemical waste, creating water pollution and pouring carbon into the atmosphere. A recent study by the Danish environment agency found that a paper bag must be reused 43 times if it is to have a lower environmental impact than the average plastic bag.
Increasingly, coffee shops and cafés are stocking disposable paper cups that do not contain plastic. As the Bill stands, they will not be included in the new charges. There were 5 billion disposable coffee cups used in the UK last year. Noble Lords only have to look at the aftermath of any big event to see the plethora of paper cups left littering the venue and its surrounding areas. A charge on all single-use items would go a long way to decreasing the number of disposable cups being used. Studies show that a charge of just 25p could reduce that use by more than 30%.
There were similar fears of plastic being substituted by aluminium cans, which can have a similar devastating effect on the environment. Aluminium production is energy intensive and accounts for 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Studies show that UK aluminium has one of the highest greenhouse gas impacts per kilogram of any packaging in the UK.
PwC examined the greenhouse gas impacts of packaging types currently used in the UK of the behalf of the Circular Economy Task Force. It found that all materials used for packaging consumed annually in the UK account for 13.4 megatonnes of carbon, or 2% of this country’s carbon emissions. The scale of emissions created by packaging, revealed by this study, makes it clear that the Government’s resources strategy should prioritise the reduction of all virgin materials. In a recent survey of stakeholders, one supermarket said about the drive to reduce plastics:
“The whole agenda needs to be more aligned and more encompassing with carbon. We’re so focused on the plastics that we seem to have lost sight of the impacts around climate.”
This amendment will go far to remedy these threats by bearing down on single-use materials consumption and shifting this country’s focus to a culture of reuse and refill, which must be a priority in developing the circular economy promoted by this Bill. Driving down material consumption and shifting to the reuse of materials must remain the Government’s highest priority.
When a similar amendment to this one was tabled in the other place, the Minister, Rebecca Pow, said that, when looking at this Bill, it bears down on this country’s disposable culture. She said that it needs to be taken into account
“how much of the Bill is aimed at tackling”—[
My Lords, the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, has made a very powerful speech on cracking down not just on single-use plastics but on every single-use product. It merits deep consideration.
I was also fascinated by what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, said on Amendment 141 about those horrible little plastic sachets. I agree entirely with her that they should be banned, not just because they are dangerous for the environment but because they are fiendish little things. On the few occasions I have had them, I could not get them open, but once you stick them in your wash-bag, they burst spontaneously. There is not much point in them.
Before speaking to Amendment 140, I want to comment on something that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, said in the last debate: that her fridge lasted only 27 years. She should have bought the same model that I believe our late Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother bought for Mey Castle, which was still going after 60 years. That is a good use of material.
Amendment 140 seeks to introduce a new clause to ban the use of polystyrene as used for food containers or packaging material by
Of course, the manufacturers say than it can be recycled. No doubt it can—that is, if you can get enough of it to a sophisticated facility, it could be done, but does any noble Lord know of any council that actually collects polystyrene, either in food containers or the big chunks of it you get protecting televisions and other electronic items? I have not seen a big bin for polystyrene at any recycling centre, and all the council advice I have seen says to put it in the waste garbage bin.
Recycle Now, the national recycling campaign for England, supported and funded by the Government, managed by WRAP and used locally by over 90% of English authorities, says:
“Polystyrene is a type of plastic which is not commonly recycled … Expanded polystyrene should be placed in the waste bin … Some local authorities accept it in recycling collections although it is unlikely to actually be recycled.”
The official expert body says that it is not recycled, and we all know how dangerous it is. Therefore, if we cannot recycle it, we should ban it.
Subsection (1) of the new clause introduced by my Amendment 140 deals with the easy one to ban, which is polystyrene used as takeaway food containers or as padding to protect electrical and electronic items. It also states that these polystyrene items should not be allowed to be purchased by consumers for their own use as, for example, food containers. I submit that we could easily ban these, since there are readily available alternatives that do the job just as well. We do not need to use them for takeaway curries or fish and chips; we can use cardboard in the meantime—although the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, will understandably not want that either. Do your Lordships remember when takeaway coffees were sold in polystyrene cups to keep them hot and to protect the drinker’s hands? We never see them used now because everyone uses insulated paper cups instead. If thicker cardboard can do the job for hot coffee, then it can do it for fish and chips as well.
Recently, I received some fragile electronic items and the padding around them was shaped cardboard, moulded in exactly the same way that polystyrene is shaped when it is wrapped around the corners of televisions, washing machines et cetera. This cardboard was about three inches thick and cross-corrugated, so it was exceptionally strong—so strong that I could not bend it for the recycling box but had to cut it up into bits with my trusty Stanley knife. We can also get crinkly brown paper padding. In short, there is no longer any need for polystyrene to be used for the protective padding of any items, and it should be banned, The one exception that I would make in the short term is its use for big polystyrene trays in commercial transport and in the freezing and chilling of fish, as long as there are very firm controls on it being recycling or melted down when it has passed its use.
Subsection (2) of the new clause introduced by my Amendment 140 deals with the use of polystyrene in construction. I accept that this is a trickier problem, requiring a longer term to eradicate it. It is a superb insulator and does a great job, so long as it does not catch fire. The construction industry might say that all the sheets of polystyrene do not end up scattered on the pavements outside the takeaway shops and you do not find them lying in canals or rivers, but they still end up in landfill. Does anyone seriously think that all the polystyrene cladding which will be ripped out of buildings in the next few years will be recycled? Of course, it will not; it will be dumped, as will the polystyrene cement render mix which is also used to insulate buildings. There are alternatives to polystyrene in the construction industry, but they are more expensive. However, as we have discovered, the cheapest solution is not often the safest or the best.
I will not labour the point about polystyrene in construction, but I hope that my noble friend the Minister acknowledges that this is an area which needs urgent attention. I ask him to engage with BEIS and the housing department to seek solutions that get rid of all polystyrene in construction as soon as is practically possible. However, dealing with its use in food and packaging is an easy win, and I urge him to act on that and ban it before
My Lords, I speak to Amendments 141 and 142 to 145, which are in my name. Amendment 141 relates to the plastic packaging tax, which was placed in law by this year’s Finance Bill and will come into effect next year. The tax is welcome in principle, but my amendment seeks to probe the Government on the detail. Manufacturers of innovative compostable packaging solutions are aghast that the tax makes no distinction between their products and old-fashioned polluting plastic. Members of the Bio-based and Biodegradable Industries Association have attempted to engage Ministers in Defra and the Treasury on this point but are hitting a brick wall, since the Government are interested only in a single threshold —namely, the amount of a given product that is recycled.
It is of course a fine public policy objective to encourage the use of recycled rather than virgin plastics, as the tax attempts to do, but that single criterion fails to recognise a few facts of life. First, packaging that is to come into contact with food cannot be recycled, for food hygiene reasons. Secondly, plastic films are extremely hard to recycle and, even if they are recycled, are seldom if ever recycled into new films. The idea of a circular economy on such packaging is just an illusion.
By contrast, compostable films can be an appropriate substitute and are more sustainable than conventional films from recycled sources. Compostable packaging can never contain 30% recycled content because its destined end of life is to disappear completely in the soil, leaving no microplastics behind. The unintended consequence of the tax as it stands is that these innovative solutions are perversely penalised.
The amendment asks the Government to recognise that treating independently certified compostable films as separate and distinct from conventional plastics would not create a free-for-all or a loophole. The compost quality protocol sets out clear safeguards for waste-derived compost, including by specifying that any compostable packaging and plastic wastes accepted must be independently certified to meet composting standards. Among these is BS EN 13432, referenced in the amendment, which is a strong, internationally accepted British and European standard for determining which bioplastics are industrially compostable or biodegradable when processed through anaerobic digestion or in-vessel composting. As I said in the debate on the first day in Committee, these materials are not a silver bullet but they are rightly recognised by the recent report Breaking the Plastic Wave as part of the picture when it comes to tackling plastic pollution.
Amendments 142 to 145 are related to Amendment 141. If we believe that compostable alternatives to conventional plastic have a place, particularly in food-contact packaging, it follows that we should make provision for those compostable materials to be collected so that the end-user knows that they are indeed composted. Alternatively, householders can mix them with their garden and kitchen compostable waste. As a consumer, it is baffling to pick up something that is labelled “compostable” if you have no obvious means of composting it.
The Bill rightly places in law the necessity for separate food waste collections, and my Amendments 142 to 145 simply seek to establish that independently certified compostable materials should be collected alongside this waste stream. The films that we are talking about here are of low density and can easily fit in a food-waste caddy. Indeed, in certain applications, such as the compostable bags containing bananas in Waitrose, the packaging can be used as a liner for a food caddy.
The present custom and practice of local authorities and their waste management firms is rather variable when it comes to these compostable items. Some faithfully ensure that compostable films are properly processed. Others actually strip out compostable items, treating them as contaminants. It cannot be right for consumers to be sold products that are compostable but for the waste management system to let them down at the end of the process by incinerating or landfilling these items. I shall refer to this issue in later amendments.
Approximately 45 composting plants in the UK are approved for composting inputs that include food waste at present, but the current network processes only 20% of what will be necessary from 2023 onwards. In consequence, much of the 80% extra capacity that must be built will be entirely new or revamped plants. Waste managers need a clear steer now that anaerobic digestion plants must have a composting phase in which compostable materials, such as BS EN 13432-certified packaging, are properly processed. Handling this issue properly has the potential to reduce the contamination of soil from normally polluting plastics, which is why it has the support of the National Farmers’ Union. With these amendments added to the Bill, it would be clear that as composting infrastructure is expanded across the UK, all composting plants must make provision for ensuring the proper processing of compostable packaging materials.
Finally, I turn to Amendments 130A, 130B and 141A, also in this group and capably moved and spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. I fully support her in these amendments. As the adage goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Transparency about the sheer amount of plastic used by supermarkets would catalyse consumer pressure on the big players to kick their plastic habit. I commend the work that Iceland has done, which the Minister mentioned on our first day. The transparency clause in Amendments 130A and 130B would push other firms in a similar direction. The Minister will by now have received the message that I am not going away on this issue, and I look forward to his response.
My Lords, yet again, the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, makes a soft threat to the Minister about not going away, and I support her completely. This is a really interesting group of amendments, all incredibly sensible. I have signed, with delight and surprise, Amendment 140 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, but my noble friend Lady Bennett will speak to that and I will speak to the others.
We all know that banning the use of single-use plastic has been far too slow. Many Members of your Lordships’ House have mentioned this many times and urged the Government to do something about it. The Chief Whip is waving at me; he is probably telling me, “Go on! Go on!” We have to reduce the absurd amount of plastic we are still churning out every single day when we know the danger that promises. The Government keep on publishing plans and strategies and promises and consultations and all sorts of things, but nothing actually happens. We just have to do it.
I spoke previously about how plastics, and microplastics in particular, will in future be seen in a similar light to asbestos—a substance with miraculous properties but such a huge danger to health that it is phased out almost totally from general use. That is how I would like to see the future of plastic.
The Government and Parliament have vital roles in the transition away from mass plastic. Industry, PR and lobbyists will bleat on about industry-led transition, but this is just greenwashing most of the time. For as long as you can buy bananas wrapped in plastic, you can know that the industry claims are nonsense. I realise that Iceland has taken some huge steps and is an example to other similar supermarkets. I do not eat much from Iceland, but I do support its initiatives. Parliament has to legislate, and the Government have to lead.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, also raised compostable plastics. It is an important issue, not least because of the confusion they cause. Some are home compostable in a regular back garden compost heap and will completely break down into safe, organic matter. Others will not break down except in special conditions in an industrial compost facility. There is a whole public education issue there, and not even the waste authorities seem to have worked it out yet. There is no common ruling or understanding. It seems a real shame that compostable plastics are not being collected by council waste services and are, instead, wrongly going to landfill or contaminating the plastic recycling stream.
I hope the Government have a plan for this; it is one of many issues where central government absolutely must get a grip on local authority recycling services and set basic minimum standards across the country. This is something many of us have been asking for for a long time, and it is time the Government listened.
Lastly, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said at one point that the cheapest is not the best. Of course, the cheapest immediate option is often one of the most expensive if you look over its lifetime. He is absolutely right: the cheapest is not the best. We have to look at and understand the future repercussions of everything we do.
I understand that the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, have withdrawn, which brings us to our next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott.
I will be brief. I just want to point out that we have apparently thrown away—I have checked this in lots of sources—3 million face masks every minute across the world. It means, in a way, that we cannot trust ourselves in what we think about plastic. We have to get firm and do something very serious about this, which is why I have put my name to Amendment 139.
I also support Amendment 141A about getting rid of sachets. If we do not legislate, we do not innovate. Unilever, for instance, has come up with a new seaweed-based thing to make sachets out of, which genuinely completely composts or fades away in water without any damage. Right now, the supermarkets have a free rein. Iceland has done its best but voluntary contributions never work. I have spoken about this before, but the relationship of single-use plastic to food waste is massive, because vegetables are wrapped up and you get too many—for example, you get five courgettes in a packet when you wanted one. This is a great way to get you to spend more money and creates waste all the way down the line.
I shall not go on with the statistics; everyone has come up with so many of them. All I want to say is that I once sat next to Liam Donaldson and he said that he did not sleep the night before he announced the smoking ban in Great Britain. He thought he would be the most unpopular man in Britain, but by lunchtime the next day he was the most popular man in Britain because it was what everyone wanted. The truth is, people hate plastic. Everybody moans about it; it does not matter whether you are talking to a reader of the Sun or the Daily Mail. This is a universal dislike and we want the Government to do something serious.
It needs a combination of taxes and a complete ban on single-use plastic. Around the world, 69 countries have done just that: they have banned it. If you ban it, you get innovation. Just before the pandemic, I was in India. The amount of plastic plus waste in India, which is introducing a ban from next year, is quite astonishing. One of the disastrous reasons is that there are no vultures left; they have all died because they have eaten plastic as well as the various antibiotics that were fed into cattle. One of the bizarre consequences is that at the Tower of Silence in Mumbai, a Parsi temple, there are no longer any vultures to eat the dead, so they have to be fried by solar panels. This is a really weird consequence and we are doing this with masks at the moment. Three million a minute are going into our system.
This is why you cannot trust voluntary regulations of any nature and why the Government have to seize this year of COP and the biodiversity conference and do something. We know what plastic does to our nature. We will all be proud—noble Lords will be proud and will all wake up as the most popular men in Britain.
My Lords, it is a very great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. Since she started on international issues, in speaking to Amendment 140 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, also signed by my noble friend, I will point out that in April Washington state became the seventh US state to ban takeaway polystyrene containers. Australia is planning to be rid of them by mid-2022 and Costa Rica has a ban coming in this year, so I will have to come back to that much loved government phrase “world-leading” as there is some catching up to do here on polystyrene takeaway containers in particular. I will also point out that the National Research Council in the US has found these containers can
“reasonably be anticipated to be a human carcinogen”.
This is a real no-brainer.
In 2016 a group of chefs, including some of the usual celebrity names you might expect, were calling on the London mayor to ban polystyrene as the scourge of Soho. This problem is urban, rural, marine and general—it is truly a problem everywhere. All of plastic is a problem but polystyrene is a particularly pernicious problem and this would be an easy win, as we now all keep offering the Minister.
Finally, to pick up the point of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, he perhaps underestimates the degree to which plastic really is a much-hated material. None the less, I entirely agree with him that when it comes to the waste pyramid, “reduce” is by far the best option. I hope that when we get to Report, he might think about backing my amendment, which I will be revisiting in some form. Rather than talking about resource efficiency, we should be talking about a reduction of resources.
I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, has withdrawn, so the next speaker will be the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann.
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend the Minister and the Government on the work they have already done in attempting to ensure that we reduce the amount of plastic, particularly single-use plastics, and on the measures already in the Bill, such as Clause 54 and some of the schedules. The Government and my noble friend are absolutely determined to make sure that the Bill significantly addresses the dangers and the damage done to the environment by the use of plastics, which so many of us have grown up without thinking about the consequences of using. I hope that my noble friend can engage with some of the intentions and specifics of some of the amendments in this group.
I particularly support Amendment 140, which was so clearly explained by my noble friend Lord Blencathra. Banning polystyrene use in food packaging, for example, could make a significant difference in the short term. I also agree with his aim of eventually banning it in construction.
I also add my support for the aims of the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, which concern plastics which are not polluting but have been developed to be fully biodegradable. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that some plastics are not planet-friendly, while others completely biodegrade naturally. If we are to impose a plastic tax, which I would support fully, there may be a need, through independent standards, to differentiate those that biodegrade properly from those which clearly will continue to damage the environment.
I look forward to hearing the thoughts of my noble friend about some of the amendments in this group, which are well worth considering adding to this excellent Bill.
My Lords, this is a powerful suite of amendments to tackle waste and our throw-away culture. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, said, the Government have had some success in tackling the low-hanging fruit—issues such as cotton buds containing plastics—but, somehow, sachets did not quite get included in the early initiatives. Clearly, with Covid, some uses of single-use sachets are helpful, but, in other instances, such as beauty products, it is really time for them to be banned.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, made a very compelling case for more duties on companies to ensure that there is mandatory reporting of plastic packaging. In the past, this Government have trusted too much in companies and gone down the route of voluntary schemes. Now is the time to encourage more mandatory reporting of companies in this critical area.
Of course, we are not just talking about plastics here. I was pleased to co-sign Amendment 139, in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, which will encourage charges for all single-use items. He very powerfully made the case that a number of these alternatives are equally environmentally reckless and certainly will not cut our global greenhouse gas emissions, so we have to not only tackle single-use plastics but look at the alternatives that might be proposed.
My noble friend Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville has done an absolutely sterling job tonight of raising a number of key issues and, in this group, lucidly reflecting on the issues around the importance of compostables, which can make a real contribution to moving towards more sustainable packaging alternatives. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, rightly said, the public need more education about compostables, and we need more local authorities to be collecting compostable films, because not all of them can be composted in back gardens—and indeed many households do not have back gardens, so they could not use compost bins even if they wanted to.
On behalf of the Lib Dems, I say that we absolutely support the Government’s plastic tax initiative, which is very welcome, although it clearly needs to avoid perverse penalties that would curtail the options for compostable films and incentivise their development for the future.
It was interesting to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, said about polystyrenes, which is clearly an area that needs a lot of attention. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, I think that this is a complex issue, and, in the long term, we need to look at how they can be used less in construction. However, now we absolutely need to support alternatives, because these exist for food packaging. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, clearly made the case that this has been happening in a number of places around the world already. We need to get on to this and address the issue of stopping polystyrene being used in food packaging.
Like other Members, I attest to the fact that there is support on all Benches for more support and action by the Government to tackle waste. As we move towards the end of the evening, I hope that the Minister might be able to respond positively at last to some of these amendments.
Before I address the individual amendments in the group, I reiterate that the Government absolutely share the concerns associated with the proliferation of plastics. I assure Members across the House that measures in the Bill will vastly improve the tools that we have at our disposal to tackle plastics pollution and the damage that they cause.
I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, for Amendment 139. Noble Lords have spoken extensively and unanimously about the need to combat plastics and the damage that they do to the environment. I know that litter picks on the beaches near Culross find a significant amount of single-use plastic, as they do on all beaches, sadly, even those around the Pitcairn Islands, which are the most remote on the planet.
The Bill provides a robust approach to help to move towards a more circular economy in all sectors. Items that are not captured by Clause 54 could be captured by other measures, such as EPR or resource efficiency. In response to the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, I say that I stand by my earlier comments about resource use more broadly and the need to reduce waste and our impact on the planet generally. I do not think that we disagree—we know that, in the open environment, plastics endanger wildlife in a particular way. As has been said, unlike other materials, they will persist for hundreds of years—we do not actually know how long, because none has fully decomposed— which is why we believe that they require particular, special forensic attention through these measures. Through the Bill, powers to place charges on single-use plastic items will be a powerful tool in helping us to reduce unnecessary single-use plastics.
The noble Viscount also mentioned cups. To reassure him: I recently learned that disposable cups filled with liquid drinks are classified as packaging and therefore obligated under the packaging producer responsibility regulations.
On Amendments 130A and 130B in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, the Government recognise that retailers such as supermarkets have a key role to play in helping improve resource efficiency, including through the packaging they use. We are already seeking to place new requirements on producers in relation to packaging, including plastic packaging, through packaging extended producer responsibility, which we will introduce through regulations using powers in Schedules 4 and 5 to the Bill.
This will see many retailers, including supermarkets and other businesses, subject to obligations that will include, for example, reporting the amount of packaging they have placed on the market; paying the full net costs of the management of this packaging, including disposal; and paying higher fees if the packaging is tough to recycle. This will incentivise supermarkets to choose more environmentally friendly packaging.
I have done it before, but like others I pay tribute to Iceland for the leadership it is showing. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, that this cannot be about voluntary measures. Yes, Iceland has volunteered to do some great things, but that is not true of all supermarkets. As a Government we need to make what it has created—its best practice—the norm as soon as possible. That is the purpose of the regulations we are introducing.
The packaging extended producer responsibility powers to make regulations will also set definitions for different types of packaging, including primary packaging —the packaging that contains and protects a product—as well as packaging used in the transport and distribution of products. I know this is of particular interest to the noble Baroness.
The new regulations will require companies to report on packaging they have placed on the market, including the materials used and how much is recycled. That will ensure transparency, help with tracking our delivery against ambitious plastic packaging recycling targets, and show us where further action, such as introducing a ban or a charge, is needed.
With regard to the noble Baroness’s Amendment 141A and Amendment 140, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, I reassure noble Lords that the proposal for extended producer responsibility for packaging will require producers who use harder-to-recycle packaging, such as sachets or polystyrene, to pay higher fees for the management of this packaging, disincentivising its use. The test of such a policy will ultimately be the elimination of those harder-to-recycle materials altogether.
Under Section 140 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, the Government already have the power to prohibit or restrict the use of various substances. This could be used to restrict or end the use of certain types of polystyrene in certain uses where it leads to environmental harm. I very much agreed with the frustrated description by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, of the difficulties of sachets and the case for eliminating their use—and we have the tools to do so. The Government will continue to monitor and review the latest evidence and introduce further bans where viable.
I turn to Amendment 141. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said at Second Reading:
“We are subsumed by plastic.”—[Official Report, 7/6/21; col. 1297.]
She is right. The Government will implement a new plastic packaging tax from April next year, which a number of noble Lords have mentioned, to encourage greater use of recycled plastic and reduce the use of virgin plastic. It will incentivise more sustainable, reusable plastic packaging and stimulate demand for recycled materials. In addition, we already have a power in the Bill that will enable us to set charges for any single-use plastic. This includes those made from bio-based sources or designed to be biodegradable.
I will address the points made by the noble Baroness about compostable plastics. They usually require a specific set of circumstances to break down as intended, and under current practices we cannot yet guarantee that those plastics will be appropriately and properly treated. They are not always as they are described or as they seem. You could even say there is quite a lot of—I am not sure I would use the term—“fraud” in the sector; there is a lot of very misleading advertising. When processed incorrectly they can be—they are not always—a source of microplastics and can contaminate recycling streams. For that reason, we are working with the industry and the research community to better understand the impacts of using bio-based, biodegradable and compostable plastics, including their impact on existing waste treatment infrastructure and their actual, real-world degradation timeframes.
The Government will keep the treatment of these new products in the tax regime under review. We would of course consult before a charge is implemented and explore that with industry, as further developments in these materials are made and the availability of the infrastructure to treat them catches up.
Regarding the noble Baroness’s Amendments 142 to 145, compostable packaging is not generally collected for recycling at present. In fact, it is frequently stripped out from food waste before processing to avoid cross-contamination or machine damage. As a result, it is not one of the recyclable waste streams named specifically in the Bill. On the back of the research that I mentioned earlier and standardisation of what genuinely is compostable or biodegradable plastic—and as the science, technology and our understanding improve—the amendment that she has put forward would make a great deal of sense. If a plastic is genuinely compostable and not going to break down into small particles of plastic that will do even more harm, including it in food waste to compost would make perfect sense. However, we are not there yet from a technological point of view. We certainly do not have the confidence to do that.
However, provisions in Clause 56 enable the Secretary of State to make regulations to add further recyclable waste streams for collection in the future. If compostable packaging was suitable for collection and recycling, if recycling it could have an environmental benefit and, crucially, if there was infrastructure for its collection, it could, as I said, be added to the list in future—but we have work to do.
I hope that I have addressed the concerns raised so far today on this issue. I thank noble Lords for their contributions and hope that the noble Baroness will be willing to withdraw her amendment.
I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, wishes to speak after the Minister, so I call her now.
My Lords, I have a very simple question. The Minister referred to the Government already having power to ban materials such as certain sorts of polystyrene containers. Do they have any plans to take such action?
Do we have plans? We are committed to extending our bans on unnecessary single-use packaging and have a 25-year environment plan to phase out all unnecessary use of plastic, not just single-use plastic, so in that sense, yes, we do have a plan. The noble Baroness is right that there will need to be continuous pressure. I think that pressure will continue to grow from consumers, voters and from parliamentarians of all parties to accelerate those bans and expand their remit. From my point of view, I have ambition and hope that we will expand that approach as far and wide as we possibly can and as quickly as we can.
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for the support for my noble friend Lady Ritchie’s amendments, particularly on action for transparency and for tackling the use of sachets.
The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, made a very important point: we need a holistic approach to the banning of all single-use products. That point was very well made. He also quite rightly made the point that it is often hard to know the composition of the materials you are dealing with, particularly single-use materials. Some of them conspire to look like wood but they are not always wood, for example.
The noble Viscount also decried the huge amount of packaging that comes with online purchases. I could see loads of heads nodding when he mentioned that. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, rightly pointed out that polystyrene is also massively overused in packaging when other materials that can be more easily recycled are available. We very much support his plea for a ban in that regard.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, quite rightly reminded us that history will judge us badly if we do not tackle plastic and that we may well find out that, historically, it is seen as damaging as asbestos. She is quite right about that. As the Minister said, we do not quite know the full effects of plastic in the environment yet. We are yet to find out some of those horrors.
The noble Baroness also quite rightly pointed out some of the difficulties with biodegradable and compostable plastics, which break down differently in the waste stream. There is a lack of guidance for waste managers and a lack of information for consumers at the present time. It is important to tackle that issue if we are to encourage the use of compostable plastic in the future; I was interested to hear what the Minister had to say on that.
I am so glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, raised the issue of plastic face masks. It was shocking to hear that we are throwing away 3 million face masks a minute. I know that the Minister is passionate about this, as he demonstrated earlier in the debate. I do not know whether we could get away with announcing a complete ban on plastic face masks but perhaps we could have a quick win—maybe a world first—if we required all workplaces to provide all of their staff with reusable masks. That would be a fairly easy way to intervene in the current obsession with people using disposable masks.
The Minister said that there were already some requirements on supermarket reporting and he detailed some of them, but our amendment would go further, to all large employers. I hope he would agree that there is a real need to tackle the greenwash claims that abound among some employers and supermarkets. We need to have the facts out in the open to shine some light. What was the comment from the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell: sunshine is the best disinfectant? That is what we need: some more light shone on these claims.
Did the Minister mention our sachets campaign? That is the thing that got the most support from around the Chamber. Maybe that could be another quick win, if the Minister was so inclined to have a sachet ban. Quite honestly, I do not think that most people would miss them if they were not there.
I will report back to the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, on the nature of the comments made today, but in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment 130A withdrawn.
Amendment 130B not moved.