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 1 January 2023, and ban its use in construction by 31 December 2026, in five years’ time. Why do I want to do that? Polystyrene is lightweight and has superb insulation properties for keeping items cold or hot. It is widely used for a whole range of functions but where safer alternatives could be used instead; because it is widely used, it is one of the most dangerous and polluting plastics damaging our environment today.
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.
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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 1 January 2023. If he needs another year, I can live with that—I am a reasonable person after all.