Brands that produce plastic packaging should pay the price for waste, Mayor tells MPs
The Mayor of Hackney, Philip Glanville, has urged the Government to make sure brands that sell or produce goods in plastic packaging pick up the bill for the waste they cause.
Speaking to MPs in the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee’s inquiry into the implications of the Government’s waste strategy, he urged the Government to strengthen its proposals to make brands that produce packaging responsible for the costs of managing packaging waste, by ensuring that these take into account all aspects of managing packaging waste, not just the cost of collecting recycling.
He told the Committee that the industry should “get its act in order” by “making sure that they are not producing packaging that isn’t recyclable”, while saying that the principles outlined in the strategy to make producers pay for the costs of managing waste were “positive”.
The Mayor also called for any changes to local waste collections in the waste strategy to be fully funded by central Government.
We need to fundamentally rethink how we approach waste - not only by increasing recycling, but by drastically reducing the materials we produce and consume.
We’re taking radical action to reduce waste in Hackney by eliminating single-use plastic from Council buildings, introducing a network of free water fountains across the borough and working with the North London Waste Authority on new Low Plastic Zones.
However, for too long, packaging producers have shirked their responsibility for the waste they create, leaving our planet paying the price for ever-increasing amounts of waste and local government footing the bill for disposing and recycling packaging.
While we are broadly supportive of the Government’s proposal to make producers pay for the costs of managing packaging waste, we’re asking them to make sure that the full costs of processing waste are incorporated into the strategy.
This will encourage producers to radically reduce the amount of waste they produce by ensuring there’s a price to pay if they continue to flood our planet with unnecessary packaging.
