§ Lord Reaasked Her Majesty's Government:
What measures they are taking to encourage the use of degradable plastic products, particularly in packaging materials. [HL6029]
§ Lord Whitty:The Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 1997 (as amended) place obligations on certain businesses to recover and recycle specific tonnages of packaging waste. The placing of recycling targets on businesses provides an incentive to make recycling as cost-effective as possible, and one way of doing this is for business to use materials that are easily recyclable wherever possible.
A substitute for plastic made from potato starch has now been developed which is used for some types of packaging by some retailers. This material is entirely bidegradable. Other biodegradable materials are manufactured using technologies based on modified plastics made from mineral oil. It is not clear therefore that the use of biodegradable materials in packaging applications is necessarily a sustainable solution to the general problem of managing plastics waste.