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Written question asked by Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat) on Friday, 11 December 2020, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 15 December 2020. It was answered by Rebecca Pow (Conservative) on Monday, 21 December 2020 on behalf of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Packaging: Recycling

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the merits of requiring all (a) cleaning product and (b) food containers to be reusable.

Answer

We have not made a comprehensive assessment of the merits of requiring all cleaning product and food containers to be reusable. However, we do see merit in more packaging being reusable. An increase in the use of reusable packaging will help us to achieve our ambitions of doubling resource productivity and eliminating avoidable waste by 2050, as stated in our Resources and Waste Strategy (2018).

We are currently developing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging. Through this, we want to encourage producers to move to reusable packaging, where this is appropriate and practicable. EPR for packaging will see producers paying for the waste management costs associated with the packaging that they place on the market. In using reusable packaging, producers will pay less because they will only pay fees for the first time the reusable packaging is placed on the market. In addition to this, EPR for packaging will see those costs modulated (varied) to account for various criteria. This could see producers who use reusable or recyclable packaging paying less than those who do not. We will be consulting in early 2021 on our proposals for introducing EPR for packaging.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
128735
Session
2019-21
Subjects
Detergents Food Recycling Packaging
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk