16:30 Daniel Zeichner (Labour)

What an uplifting petition. The sentiment behind it speaks for itself. It has been signed by 247,048 people—nearly a quarter of a million people—illustrating the strength of feeling. That includes nearly 1,000 people from my Cambridge constituency, where this is a matter of great interest and concern. It is clear that the public mood about packaging, whether it goes to landfill or pollutes our oceans and rivers, has changed over the past few years. We have woken up. There is genuine public recognition of the climate crisis and concern about the natural destruction caused by non-recyclable waste.

At the roundtable in Cambridge last week, Seigo Robinson and others were concerned that reducing non-recyclable plastic packaging was not necessarily compatible with the drive to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. For example, it was said that “carting around loads of refillable jam jars” would use “loads of CO 2 ”; we may not have been precise or measurable on this occasion, but hon. Members will get the point. Alternatives to plastic packaging, such as paper, steel, wood and glass, could sadly have far worse carbon footprints. People said that plastic pollution of the oceans and carbon emissions needed to go hand in hand, and argued that recycling ought to be a last resort; people should look at using reusable containers for many years before thinking about the need for recycling.

The drink stirrer announcement grabbed headlines, but we need to seize this moment to make the “rapid”, “unprecedented” and “far-reaching” transitions that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report called for in October. In evidence to the EFRA Committee’s inquiry, the Green Alliance recommended moving away from piecemeal action and approaching plastic, packaging and resource use in general in a much more systemic way. This means viewing plastic as just one resource among many used in our economy, all of which have environmental impacts of some sort.

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17:41 Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)

The plastics packaging industry makes various claims trying to minimise the perception of its impact. Plastics do not make up the majority of waste, measured by weight, but neither the climate change impact nor the pollution impact of waste is dependent on weight. Yes, of course, we want a sustainable solution for construction hardcore, but the environmental impact of a tonne of inert mixed rubble is negligible in comparison with the enormous problem that would be represented by a tonne of polystyrene foam or polythene bags.

The feedstock for most plastics is still fossil fuel, and the absolute necessity eventually to bring to an end the consumption of fresh fossil fuels, if we are to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, must include an end to the use of fossil fuels to create plastics as well. The industry proudly insists that 78% of plastics are currently recovered, but that mainly refers to recovery through incineration in energy-from-waste plants. The exact efficiency of the electricity generation varies from plant to plant, and depends on the mix of waste being incinerated, but we can be sure that plastic incinerated in an energy-from-waste plant will generate significantly less electricity than the oil it was made from would have done in a conventional oil-fired power station.

We do not use oil-fired power stations any more, as a rule, because of their unsustainable climate change implications. How much more unsustainable is it to incinerate plastic in an energy-from-waste plant? My third ask of the Minister is whether the Government have any plans to ensure that the proposed extended producer responsibility for packaging production will simply be allowed to subsidise more energy-from-waste plants, or whether they have any plans to ensure that the money is used to incentivise recycling instead?

Dealing with our waste will be a crucial part of our ability to deal with the environment and climate emergency that we face. We need to reduce the amount of waste we create, and to reuse our packaging wherever possible and recycle or compost what is left, if we are to achieve zero net emissions by 2050 or stand any chance of maintaining any quality of life on our planet, for ourselves or any other creatures.

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