A summary of responses to HM Treasury’s call for evidence on how tax can be used to reduce plastic waste, shows a strong public backing, it says. The call attracted an “unprecedented” 162,000 responses, the highest in the Treasury’s history.
The Chancellor, Philip Hammond, has reiterated the department’s commitment to take action through the tax system to reduce the amount of single-use plastic waste. The views received will help inform and shape the Government’s approach ahead of this year’s Budget.
Measures which received noteworthy public support and are being considered include using the tax system to:
- Encourage greater use of recycled plastic in manufacturing rather than new plastic
- Discourage the use of difficult to recycle plastics, like carbon black plastic
- Reduce demand for single-use plastics like coffee-cups and takeaway boxes
- Encourage further recycling as opposed to incineration.
The Exchequer Secretary, Robert Jenrick, while visiting a plastic pollution clean-up operation on Perranporth Beach in Cornwall, said: “Tackling the scandal of plastic pollution is one of our top priorities and we know the public is right behind us. I’ve been overwhelmed by the public support and the responses we’ve received will be invaluable as we develop our plans for using the tax system to combat this.
“Our duty to leave the environment in a better state than we found it is absolutely clear and what we’ve set out today is another important step to ensuring a cleaner, greener future for Britain.”
“This is a clear indication of the public appetite for more fiscal interventions to help reduce plastic pollution littering our environment, from inner-city streets and countryside to our oceans.”
Hugo Tagholm, CEO of Surfers Against Sewage, said: “Surfers Against Sewage is delighted with the huge public response to the Treasury’s recent call for evidence on how the tax system could be used to reduce plastic waste, which many of our supporters responded to.
“This is a clear indication of the public appetite for more fiscal interventions to help reduce plastic pollution littering our environment, from inner-city streets and countryside to our oceans.”
The Treasury is also looking at how it could further support measures to fund the development of new, greener products and innovative processes that will help ensure a more sustainable future for the country.
This work forms part of the Government’s overall commitment in its 25 Year Environment Plan to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste.
It builds on the recently announced £20 million plastics innovation fund – to support the production of sustainable and recyclable plastics – and follows the £61.4 million announced by the Prime Minister to be invested in tackling plastic in the world’s oceans.
Meeting Public Appetite
David Palmer-Jones, CEO of SUEZ recycling and recovery UK, commented, saying the whole country pays the price of cheap disposable plastic if it ends up polluting our natural resources.
“Extended producer responsibility schemes will help meet the overwhelming public appetite to reduce litter and environmental pollution, and help us to reuse and recycle more of what we consume,” he said.
“Producers can currently produce unsustainable products that are difficult, or impossible, to recycle and these are simply thrown away, while the consumer and environment picks up that disposal cost. If, through extended producer responsibility, the use of recycled materials in new products was incentivised, manufacturers would quickly take greater interest in getting their material back.
“Instead of being a blunt instrument, an extended producer responsibility scheme, designed with the right fiscal measures, would consign unnecessary single-use plastics to the scrap heap and spawn a new generation of better designed products using more recyclable content.”
“An enlightened approach to increasing the financial burden placed on the use of virgin materials, while reducing that burden for higher recycled content, would allow a post-Brexit Britain to forge ahead towards a fully functioning circular economy, driven by society valuing materials as important resources, rather than just wasting them.
“A careful balance needs to be taken to ensure that the full benefits of an extended producer responsibility scheme are complemented and not complicated by new taxation measures but Government, working with industry across the sector, should have no doubt that this balance is achievable.
“Instead of being a blunt instrument, an extended producer responsibility scheme, designed with the right fiscal measures, would consign unnecessary single-use plastics to the scrap heap and spawn a new generation of better designed products using more recyclable content.
“Creating financial differentials that favour secondary resources over virgin ones will encourage the use of more recycled content at the point of production; help increase our absolute levels of recycling; and alleviate the financial burden of waste from resting almost solely on local authorities and, instead, passing this burden of sustainability to the producers.
“For Britain to be at the vanguard of the world’s sustainable economies, we need to move away from a linear view of the world, where the full cost of the resources being used, reused and wasted is not realised.”
The sooner we place design, material use and re-use in the context of whole-life product and materials management, the sooner will we realise a way out of the world we have created, of low and wasteful resource productivity.”
See the summary of responses to the consultation here.
