Plastic Waste (Hansard, 16 July 2001)

§ Lord Whitty

The British Plastics Federation has provided the estimates for the UK below. They include packaging and non-packaging waste and, in the total figure, an estimated 425,000 tonnes of recycled pre-consumer plastic waste each year.

Year	Amount of plastic waste produced (millions of tonnes)	Post consumer recycling ('000s of tonnes)	Post consumer recycling %	Total plastic waste recycled, including pre- consumer waste ('000s of tonnes)	Combined recycling %
2000	3.00	238	7.9	663	22.1
1999	2.94	218	7.4	643	21.9
1998	2.88	145	5.0	570	19.8
1997	2.83	121	4.3	546.5	19.3
1996	2.77	115	4.2	540.5	19.5

Waste Strategy 2000 announced a number of measures designed to deliver a major increase in recycling across all waste streams. These include statutory targets and significant extra funding for local authorities; increases in the landfill tax; and measures to ensure that manufacturers take responsibility for the recycling of the goods they produce.

We have also established the new Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), with £40 million of government funding for its first three years to tackle the market barriers to increased recycling. Plastics is one of the four materials on which WRAP will be focusing initially. Its work on plastics will include:

a marketing initiative to raise the awareness of major purchasers of the range of quality or recycled plastic products already available;

a standards and specifications programme to remove discriminatory specifications and introduce standards for plastics recyclates, including uses for plastic film;

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an R&D programme to develop plastics recycling technology;

encouraging product design that supports efficient recycling, and encouraging the incorporation of recycled plastics in existing product lines.

Further details are available at www.wrap.org.uk.