Earlier this month the government announced that a range of polluting single-use plastics will be banned in England from October 2023, following similar legislation already in place in Scotland and Wales. The ban will include single-use plastic plates, trays, bowls, cutlery, and certain types of polystyrene cups and food containers.
Government figures suggest that 1.1 billion single-use plates and more than four billion pieces of plastic cutlery are used in England every year.
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.
As businesses prepare for the ban and look at the alternative choices available it is an opportunity to consider the role compostable packaging has to play in the future of single use catering items. Compostable packaging is seen as an eco-friendly alternative to single-use plastics as it can be fully decomposed. Currently the options for businesses to recycle their compostable packaging is limited, however, this new legislation could increase demand for kerbside and commercial collections of compostable products, which are then processed at industrial composting facilities.
Envar and the work of the Compostable Coalition, are working to evidence that compostable packaging can be effectively collected and organically recycled via existing UK bio-waste infrastructure. The Compostable Coalition are developing a roadmap for the UK Government to play its part in effectively collecting and treating compostables at scale through existing biowaste infrastructures such as Envar’s in-vessel composting facility in Cambridgeshire.
