My Lords, there is an emerging consensus that plastics are worse for the environment than other substances used in single-use products. The plastics tax scheduled to be introduced next year will create an incentive for suppliers to shift away from plastics towards other substances, such as glass, aluminium and cardboard. However, this will not necessarily benefit the environment in all cases. I agree very much with what my noble friend Lord Blencathra just said about polystyrene, but the situation as far as plastic bottles are concerned is different. The carbon footprint released by the manufacture of glass and aluminium is around five times greater than that released by PET manufacturing. In other ways, too, PET has advantages over other substances for water and soft drinks bottles. Do we want a return to the days when there was a significant risk of cutting your foot on broken glass discarded on a beach?
Furthermore, there is growing public acceptance of a higher proportion of recycled material within bottles on the market today. Many brands of bottled water now supply bottles containing 50% recycled material. As far as plastic bottles are concerned, the answer is surely to introduce a deposit return scheme similar to that in operation in Germany, which should enable us to equal the German achievement of recycling 98% of plastic bottles compared with our record of around 68%.
Amendment 36 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, would introduce a plastic strategy for England. I think it should cover other materials besides plastics. It is also essential that discussions with the devolved authorities result in the adoption of a single coherent strategy for the United Kingdom as a whole. The Scottish deposit scheme, for example, requires producers to provide a great deal of detailed information, but, bizarrely, does not require labelling
to state clearly whether a product can be recycled. This is very difficult for small brewers that sell through wholesalers that distribute products in England and Scotland.
I do not know whether the noble Baroness and her co-signatories recognise the conflict inherent in subsection (3) of their proposed new clause. Subsection (3)(a) seeks to achieve
“a reduction in single use plastics”.
This is surely incompatible with subsection (3)(b), because the shift to greater use of glass and aluminium will result in increased carbon emissions.
As far as bottles are concerned, if we can move to a culture of recycling based on an effective deposit return scheme, there are reasons to retain PET. We should not throw the baby out with the bath-water.