A government ban on a raft of single-use plastic items will come into force in October, environment secretary Thérèse Coffey has announced.
The ban on single-use plastic plates, trays, bowls, cutlery, balloon sticks, and types of polystyrene cups and food containers had been widely flagged, but the government said it wanted to give businesses time to prepare.
As expected, it will not apply to plates, trays and bowls that are used in shelf-ready prepackaged food items, with the government confirming they would be included in its plans for the rollout of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). It hopes this will incentivise producers to use packaging that can be recycled and meet higher recycling targets.
According to government estimates, England uses 2.7 billion items of single-use cutlery — most of which are plastic — and 721 million single-use plates per year, but only 10% are recycled.
Similar bans have already been made in Scotland and Wales, while single-use plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds were already banned in England in 2020.
“We all know the absolutely devastating impacts plastic can have on our environment and wildlife,” said Coffey.
“We have listened to the public and these new single-use plastic bans will continue our vital work to protect the environment for future generations.
“I am proud of our efforts in this area: we have banned microbeads, restricted the use of straws, stirrers and cotton buds, and our carrier bag charge has successfully cut sales by over 97% in the main supermarkets.”
Richard Swannell, interim CEO of Wrap, said: “We are in full support of this announcement by Defra, which marks important progress in the wholesale removal of problematic and unnecessary plastics that can end up as plastic pollution.
“Wrap is working with UK businesses to meet ambitious targets in this important area, and our latest results show an 84% reduction in problematic and unnecessary single-use plastics by our UK Plastics Pact members since 2018.”
Campaign groups have urged the government to move faster in the war on plastic.
“We finally now have confirmation that this ban we’ve spent years campaigning for will come into force in October 2023,” said Steve Hynd, policy manager at City to Sea.
”This is over two years after the EU implemented a ban. For England to be true ‘global leaders’ in tackling plastic pollution like this government claims to be, we need them to go much further. We need to see an overarching strategy for tackling plastic pollution that commits to a legally binding reduction of single-use plastics.”
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