PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Waste and Recycling - 9 December 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

I am grateful to have the opportunity to raise these issues this evening. The UK Government’s approach to waste management and recycling has evolved significantly in recent years, reflecting growing environmental concerns and the push for sustainability. Every single year, the UK generates nearly 200 million tonnes of total waste, but recycling rates in England have been stagnant for some time. The previous Conservative Government made huge efforts to improve that in recent years. Their simpler recycling reforms will move us towards a more consistent system across England. In 2026 we are expected to see the majority of planned recycling reforms come into effect, with recyclable plastic films to come in 2027.

The last Government made great progress with their “maximising resources, minimising waste” programme, which brought together a range of initiatives to keep products and materials in circulation for as long as possible, and at their highest value, including through increasing reuse, repair and remanufacture, helping to grow the economy and boost employment. These plans included scrapping fees for households to have bulky domestic furniture collected from their homes in 2025, saving people money and making it easier for them to recycle furniture so it can be reused, as well as helping to prevent fly-tipping.

The last Government did not stop there. They also made reforms to ensure collections of food waste for most households across England by 2026. Further still, they delivered on reforms for reporting requirements for extended producer responsibility, meaning that producers and businesses will be required to pay for the collection and disposal of household packaging that they supply when it becomes waste. That will cut waste and move costs away from local authorities.

I am glad to hear that. Hopefully Stockton’s Labour borough council can learn some lessons from Wales, because we have some of the most shambolic recycling rates in the entire country. There will be lessons to learn for Stockton-on-Tees borough council. Extended producer responsibilities will cut waste and move costs away from local authorities and taxpayers.

I commend the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. When it comes to records and what is being done well, I think we should recognise that my own local council is near the very top of the recycling charts in Northern Ireland, although there is still much to be achieved, of course. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that to reach all our local government targets, and if we want to be good stewards of what we have, more support must be available to supply bigger recycling bins to customers? Further to that, does he agree that we should ask the Minister to provide help to councils to enable them to do even more with recycling?

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. The receptacles that we recycle in are a game changer. In Stockton, we have these disposable bags that disappear off down the road whenever it is windy, never to be seen again. Having the right recycling receptacles is important. As a country, we need to look to the councils that do it well, learn the lessons and roll out best practice.

The previous Government kick-started plans for a comprehensive deposit return scheme. It is estimated that UK consumers go through about 14 billion plastic drinks bottles and 9 billion drinks cans every single year, often contributing to our litter epidemic.

My hon. Friend raises the issue of plastic. With the growth of anaerobic digesters dealing with more food waste, energy-from-waste incinerators are now burning more plastic. BBC analysis of five years of real data shows that incinerators are now the dirtiest way to produce power. Does he agree that in dealing with recycling and its growth, we should not be building more incinerators—and in particular not building the Wisbech incinerator?

I agree wholeheartedly. Putting these plants in the right place is a very big deal—I know how hard my right hon. Friend worked to prevent that. I could not agree more. I would be grateful if the Minister could provide an update on the roll-out of the deposit return scheme and say when it is set to be delivered.

Of course, it is not just businesses but local communities that can support the Government’s goals to ensure responsible waste disposal.

Order. If the hon. Member could come further forward and sit back down, a formal intervention could then be made quite smoothly and quickly.

I would be very happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman.

I thank the hon. Gentleman. My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker.

On the matter of consumers taking responsibility for recycling, does the hon. Gentleman agree that the prevalence of accessible recycling centres, and having them close to where people live, is important in increasing the volume of recycling that we can achieve? One recycling centre that was used by my constituents has been closed down, which means that the nearest centre now is more than 3 miles away. Does he agree that keeping these recycling centres open and making them more effective at recycling would be a step forward?

I agree entirely. As we look across the piece at the challenges we face in recycling, we should be doing everything we can to make it as convenient and as local to people as possible. We have to worry about the consequences of not having local recycling schemes. Some people might dispose of their waste irresponsibly and choose to fly-tip instead of making the journey.

An estimated 2.25 million pieces of litter are dropped every day in the UK, with the consequence that around £1 billion is spent every year by local authorities and land managers to clear it up. In Stockton West, we are fortunate to have some amazing, community-spirited litter-picking groups: the Thornaby community litter pickers, the Eaglescliffe community litter project, the Ingleby Barwick litter pickers and the Hartburn community litter pick. These incredible volunteers protect our environment and restore pride in our communities.

The last Government took action and increased the maximum fines for fly-tippers from £400 to £1,000, alongside increasing the maximum fine for those who litter or graffiti from £150 to £500. What further steps are the Government taking to tackle that important issue, and what steps are they taking to support and recognise these important community litter pick groups?

The Government must allow an environment for businesses to innovate and help to create solutions that support households to reduce waste, and they must tackle the 40.4 million tonnes of commercial and industrial waste generated every year. Businesses that innovate in this space for the common social good include Amazon, whose Multibank initiative helps redistribute 750,000 items of surplus goods to families in need. We were delighted to see its most recent scheme launch in Teesside, reducing waste while improving people’s lives.

Humans waste around 40% of the food produced, and that contributes 10% of global emissions. The Government should champion enterprises such as Too Good To Go in their efforts to reduce food waste, taking excess produce and ensuring that it is put to good, value-for-money use. Currently, the Government’s target is to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030, and they must take further policy measures to ensure that we reach that target. One cost-effective measure to the taxpayer that Too Good To Go is calling for is mandatory public food waste reporting, which would deliver a vital first step in measuring food wastage and drive businesses to innovate for meaningful change and allow customers to make informed decisions. Will the Minister confirm that the Government are considering mandatory food waste reporting?

The answer to our waste and recycling challenges starts at home—in fact, in every home in the country, and how they dispose of their waste. Local authorities have the biggest role in determining that, as they decide how and where people can dispose of their waste and recycling. Although the Government can go so far directly, they also have a role in ensuring that local authorities are doing all they can to support residents and businesses to drive up recycling rates. While UK councils are required to run a service that collects recycling and garden waste separate from general waste, councils are not obligated by legislation to separate the different types of recycling. Different recyclable materials may not be collected if it is not “technically or economically practicable”.

A study by the TaxPayers’ Alliance found that many constituents and households had concerns that they would have to deal with multiple different bins, placing unnecessary obligations on households and businesses. We have seen a complete disparity among local authorities when it comes to delivering the Government’s waste and recycling strategy. Some local authorities have up to 10 different bins compared with others that have only two. Although waste collection is one of the primary services provided by councils, the inconsistent and often inefficient approach has hugely varying consequences. Good, efficient councils provide accessible, reliable, well-used services, while others less so, with real consequences for littering, fly-tipping and recycling rates.

In my constituency, Stockton’s Labour-led council provides the worst example, with poor services and even poorer value for money. Stockton’s Labour council has presided over the worst recycling rate in the region, and its rates are so poor that they are among the worst in the entire country. Local litter pickers have questioned why the council are failing to take action on fly-tippers, with Stockton being among the lowest performing when it comes to issuing penalties. All the while, the verges of the A66, one of the gateways to the town, remain covered in discarded cans, bottles and rubbish.

It is about to get a whole lot worse. Despite Labour subjecting residents to some of the highest council tax rates in the entire country, the council decided to vastly reduce waste and recycling services. It is axing weekly bin collections, and now residents will have to stack up waste for fortnightly collections. It has closed four local recycling centres, making people travel to other towns to dispose of their recycling.

That is an interesting point. I think that there is a responsibility on the Government and local authorities to ensure that we recycle stuff rather than shipping it abroad or putting it into landfill. It is our problem, and we should sort it out at home whenever possible. I look forward to what will be achieved in the next few years.

Stockton-on-Tees borough council is ending our free green waste collections, imposing additional charges on anyone wanting to get rid of grass clippings, fallen leaves and garden waste. The changes represent a fly-tippers charter, and there are now fears that Stockton could become the UK’s fly-tipping capital, because these barriers could lead to more people disposing of waste irresponsibly. Residents ask me why their services are being slashed when the council tax that they pay is among the highest in the country.

While those on my Labour council are no good at dealing with waste collection, they are experts at producing plenty of waste. The council has spent nearly £16 million on recruitment consultants since 2021—£370,000 a month. It is refusing to answer questions about the use of other consultants and the costs; it is spending more on director salaries of over £100,000 than other councils across the region; it is spending money on flying people out to Montpellier and Copenhagen to watch shows and decide whether they are worth featuring at the local festival; it continues to throw VIP soirées with free food and drink for councillors; and much, much more. Does the Minister agree that when it comes to delivering the Government’s recycling aims and ambitions and driving up the UK’s stagnant recycling rates, we need to ensure that all councils take their role seriously?

What a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship this evening, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers) for raising this issue—he has certainly had a busy day, having moved from the Front Bench to the Back Benches—and I thank everyone else who has taken part in the debate.

The Secretary of State has made it clear that resources and waste are a priority issue for DEFRA, and I am pleased to share our plans in this regard. The Government are committed to the transition to a circular economy—a future in which we keep our resources in use for longer, reduce our carbon emissions and invest in critical infrastructure and green jobs in every nation and region, and in which our economy prospers and nature thrives. We want to abandon our linear and unsustainable “take, make, throw” model, which means that we extract resources from the Earth, make things and then throw them away, because there is no such place as “away”. If the whole world consumed resources as we do in the UK, we would need 2.5 times the Earth’s raw materials to sustain our current systems. Meanwhile, nearly 100 million tonnes of residual waste is disposed of annually, and waste crime alone costs our economy £1 billion every year.

That cannot continue. We must and will move toward a system that values longevity, repair and reuse over disposal. In our manifesto, we pledged to reduce waste by moving to a circular economy. That is why we have committed ourselves to developing a circular economy strategy for England, which we will create in partnership with experts from industry, academia, civil society, local government and beyond.

I am glad that the Minister has described this as a priority. She has a statutory target to halve residual waste, but what she has not mentioned is the impact that will have on mega-incinerators that are being built essentially to burn plastic. Does she accept that more than 30 environmental charities—charities usually linked to her party and the left—are strongly opposed to those incinerators, and will she commit herself to publishing an impact assessment on the effect of reducing residual waste on the need for incinerators?

I will come on to those points later in my speech, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will intervene if he does not get the satisfaction and clarity that he seeks. Good things come to those who wait.

Let me begin with the strategy. We want to have an economy-wide transformation of our relationship with our resources, which is all about supporting the Government’s missions to kick-start economic growth, make Britain a clean energy superpower, and accelerate the path to net zero through our efforts to tackle waste crime and take back our streets. To answer the question posed by the hon. Member for Stockton West, preventing food waste is key to my Department, and we are reviewing a range of issues associated with food waste in the supply chain. We hope to make further announcements soon.

Let me address the collection and packaging reforms, which the hon. Member outlined. They are an important starting point in transitioning to a circular economy, and we are proud of the steps that we have taken so far. Over the next three years, simpler recycling, extended producer responsibility and the deposit return scheme will deliver transformational change, creating thousands of new jobs and stimulating billions of pounds’ worth of investment. Those three areas make up the three-legged stool of this Government’s plan to kick-start the circular economy, so I will briefly take each one in turn.

The first area is simpler recycling. We recently affirmed our commitment to delivering simpler recycling in England, which will be introduced for businesses from 31 March 2025 and for households from 31 March 2026. This Government inherited legislation introduced by the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) that could have required households to have up to seven bins. As the hon. Member for Stockton West rightly said, some councils have up to 10 bins, but that is because they thought they were doing the right thing, given the signals that were being sent out under the previous Government. That places an unnecessary burden on people and businesses, and unnecessary clutter in everyone’s front and back gardens. We are simplifying the rules to make recycling easier for people, while stimulating growth, maximising the benefits and ending the postcode lottery for recycling. Across England, people will be able to recycle the same materials at home, work or school.

The legislation for simpler recycling has already come into force. To confirm the final details of the policy, we laid regulations before Parliament on 3 December. The policy will support our ambition to recycle 65% of municipal waste by 2035. It is important to remember that figure, because when the last Labour Government brought in the landfill tax reforms in 2002, the original target was to have a recycling rate of 50% by 2015—a target that, sadly, was lost under the previous Government. Ten years on from that date, the target has still not been met.

The policy will also deliver an estimated £11.8 billion-worth of carbon savings between 2024 and 2035. As we have heard, local circumstances differ across the country, so we are making sure that councils and other waste collectors have the flexibility to make the best local choices. We know that local authorities may want to review their waste collection services to ensure that they provide best value for money. As is currently the case, local councils will continue to decide the frequency of waste collections in a way that suits the needs of their local community. The Government’s priority is to ensure that households’ needs are met, so we have recently published guidance to support councils in this area.

The second area is extended producer responsibility for packaging. To help fund simpler recycling, we are introducing in parallel extended producer responsibility for packaging, or pEPR, which will require obligated producers to pay the full end of life costs associated with the packaging that they place on the market. That will bring more than £1 billion of investment into local government waste collections, and incentivise producers to reduce unnecessary packaging and make what they use even more sustainable. Those regulations have now been debated in both Houses. They received unanimous cross-party support and will come into force on 1 January 2025.

The third and final leg is the deposit return scheme—DRS—for drinks containers. We have seen this work in over 50 countries around the world. The DRS will make a real difference to people’s lives by tackling litter and cleaning up our streets. Recycling rates will increase and the drinks industry will benefit from the high quality recycled materials that the DRS will provide. We are committed to delivering a deposit return scheme in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland in October 2027 and we will continue to work closely with industry partners, the Scottish Government and the Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland to launch the scheme.

I worked across Europe for more than 15 years, and a DRS scheme has been in place all over Europe during all that time. I have been hearing for so long that it would arrive in the UK, but it has not, so I would be interested to hear the timescales. Also, will the Government consider putting restrictions on the use of fresh plastics for drinks bottles? Instead of them being recyclable, can we make them recycled?

I share the hon. Gentleman’s impatience. I am old enough to remember, as Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee in 2017, hearing several predecessors of the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire promising that we would have a DRS scheme. The hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) is also right to say that there is no point in recycling if there is no end market. I welcomed the plastic packaging tax that was introduced under the prime ministership of Theresa May, which mandates a 30% recycled content. The question, where fossil fuels are very cheap, is how we drive business’s behaviour change, and that is under active consideration to ensure that there is an end market for the recyclates that are placed on the market.

On the hon. Gentleman’s question about the timescale, we laid the regulations for England and Northern Ireland before Parliament on 25 November and we plan for the regulations to come into force in late January, parliamentary time permitting. The Scottish Government will then make the necessary amendments to legislation in Scotland. After that, the three Governments will appoint the Deposit Management Organisation in April 2025, for which applications opened on Monday 2 December, so this is all hot off the press, and this is a timely debate. The aim is for the DRS to come into force on 1 October 2027.

However, there is much more to do. On Friday, I was delighted to visit Suez’s Malpass Farm facility in Rugby. Working in partnership with Cemex, Suez has provided 1 million tonnes of climafuel from non-recyclable waste, diverting it from landfill and reducing coal consumption in the neighbouring Cemex plant by 75,000 tonnes, thus enabling big industrial decarbonisation. Earlier today, I made a quick trip up to Newark to visit the Curry’s site, which is home to one of its unique repair centres. I saw how Curry’s, a great and proud British company, is using its resources and its market position to repair and refurbish broken phones, laptops and tablets, and I recommend its refurbishment website to anyone looking for a last-minute gift from Santa.

Such industrial partnerships, working together to maximise the value of resources, demonstrate the role that the resources and waste sector can play in supporting net zero and supporting economic growth. A high-performing resources and waste sector is key to driving a circular economy. However, waste crime threatens this by taking resources away from that circular economy and from the good businesses that want to do the right thing and make those green investments. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) is interested in this, and I am glad to see him in his traditional place. Waste crime costs the country £1 billion a year, and we know that 18% of waste may be handled illegally at some point in the waste supply chain. That is around 34 million tonnes of waste every year. We are committed to tackling this scourge.

The Minister has spoken about many different types of rubbish, but not where it often goes, which is to household waste recycling centres. Not content with the Tory tip tax, cash-strapped Norfolk county council has gone further in trying to encourage fly-tipping by creating a mad booking system for residents who want to use household waste recycling centres. Will the Minister extend the same guidance to household waste recycling centres that she has talked about extending to kerbside recycling schemes?

I am very happy to look at that, but I gently tell the hon. Gentleman that after more than a decade of austerity, providing more services with less money is a challenge, and many local councils have not been able to square that circle. Rather than indulging in thinking about what could be done in a perfect world, we have to look at the world we are in and ask, “What can we do?” It is clear that this three-legged stool of reforms will put some much-needed fresh cash into the system, so that the various municipal collections can be ready for the go-live dates, and there may be opportunities in that.

We have had several debates about fly-tipping, and there were more than 1 million fly-tipping incidents in 2022-23, which is 10% more than we had three years ago. As the hon. Member for Stockton West said, Stockton-on-Tees alone has had 1,700 fly-tipping incidents. We cannot allow these incidents to continue, and I pay tribute to the many local litter groups he has met. I will have the enjoyment of meeting the Aylesbury Wombles in Parliament this Wednesday, and there are little groups everywhere.

We want fly-tippers and vandals to clean up the mess they have created, and we must take back our country from these criminals who blight our communities and undermine legitimate businesses. I look forward to providing details on that.

What we saw there was a local community campaigning to stop the stink, and I am pleased that the regulator has taken swift action.

On the point raised by the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire about energy from waste, his Government failed to reach their recycling targets. We do not support over-capacity of energy from waste, and incineration should be an option only for waste that cannot be prevented, reused or recycled, such as medical waste or nappies.

In the waste hierarchy, recovering energy from waste is still preferable to disposing of waste in landfill. It maximises the value of the resources being disposed of, and avoids the greater environmental impact of landfill, which continues for generations, as we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee). We cannot solve today’s problems by storing them up for future generations, so we will shortly publish our analysis of the need for further energy from waste development in England, following delivery of our reforms. However, I make it clear that it is for the relevant planning authority to determine the need for proposed developments. Our capacity assessment will help inform decision making on planning.

In a classic example of joined-up government, many of these incinerators, including the Wisbech incinerator, are classed as nationally significant infrastructure, so decisions on them are made by the Government, not devolved locally. I welcome the Minister saying that she does not support over-capacity of incineration, just as I welcome her ambition to increase recycling, but given that she wants increased recycling, there will be over-capacity of incineration. We need to see the impact assessment so that we can see the trajectory, and can see the increasing rate at which waste will be recycled. We can then avoid the over-capacity. When will we see that impact assessment, so that we do not have too much capacity in incineration?

I am a bit mystified by the right hon. Gentleman’s question, because he put a stop to planning decisions on energy from waste. Did he not conduct an impact assessment beforehand?

I do not want to intervene too much, but as a point of clarification, Madam Deputy Speaker, I was recused as the Minister, so I certainly did not make that decision. I am making the argument against incineration; I would have thought that the Minister would support that, because she wants more recycling. Over 30 environmental charities say that incineration is the dirtiest way to produce energy—that it is as dirty as coal. Five years of analysis by the BBC found it was the dirtiest. I am highlighting the contradiction between the Government saying that they are for the environment and clean energy, and there being a risk of over-capacity in incineration, which burns plastics and is harmful to the environment. I am highlighting that contradiction and saying that that is the reason why the Government should publish an impact assessment.

Order. Now that the House is aware that Mr Barclay recused himself, we should not repeat that statement, but no doubt the Minister wishes to respond.

I am very keen to set the record straight, Madam Deputy Speaker. The House will have heard what the right hon. Gentleman had to say. It is important that we do not incinerate recyclable materials. The environmental permitting regulations prevent the incineration of separately collected paper, metal, glass or plastic waste unless it has gone through some form of treatment process first, and, following that treatment, incineration is the best environmental outcome. As I say, we will publish our capacity assessment before the end of this year, and we do not support incineration over-capacity.

If we look at the waste hierarchy, waste incineration does not compete with or conflict with recycling. I think the right hon. Gentleman may have been talking to Madam Deputy Speaker when I was describing my visit to Rugby, where it is possible to see some uses for energy from waste that help with the hardest to abate industrial sectors. The process for cement, for example, requires a furnace that is heated to 1,400°C. In my view, the end result in that case means that it is a good use of incineration. That is what comes out of the municipal recycling facilities—out of our black bins—and it is the very tail end of the waste process I have described.

We have consulted on expanding the UK emissions trading scheme to include waste incineration and energy from waste, in order to divert plastics away from incineration. We are taking on board responses, and we will detail final policy on that in due course. We are including energy from waste under decarbonisation readiness requirements. We believe that any energy-producing waste facility seeking an environmental permit needs to look at how it will decarbonise. Moving to a circular economy is no small task, but we will do so by working collaboratively, and across this House, building on the policy left by the previous Government.

The Minister may wish to check Hansard to see how many times the hon. Member has mentioned his “favourite Minister”.

Indeed, and how many times my hon. Friend has mentioned Walleys Quarry.

I think the kindest thing that we can say is that the experience of Walleys Quarry is a learning experience for us all. I have a former landfill site in my constituency that has been properly remediated and covered over, with housing built alongside it. It started out as a clay quarry for brickmaking. Then it became a landfill site for the council, and now it is housing, but the site has been properly remediated. I think the problems have come through a lack of guidance and regulation about where housing can and should be built, an understandable keenness to build the homes that people desperately need, and a failure to understand that things should not be placed 30 metres away from a landfill site. It is simply not acceptable. Certainly, that is a learning point that we are bringing into the planning and infrastructure Bill.

Moving to a circular economy is no small task, but we are committed to playing our part, building the UK Government’s reputation at home and abroad, and driving green jobs, green growth and the green shoots of recovery in every nation and region of our country.

Question put and agreed to.