The Hard Truth About Soft Plastic
Recommendations in full
The public deserves transparency and should have sufficient information to understand soft plastic take-back schemes for what they are, in addition to having their concerns about plastic pollution effectively addressed. We want to ensure the need for plastic packaging reduction is not undermined, and that others do not bear the brunt of the UK’s soft plastic packaging problem.
To date, a number of different policies that relate to plastic and plastic packaging are in place or set to come into force in the UK – quite often being delayed or weakened. What this report serves to demonstrate is that the current framework of different policy requirements is resulting in industry solutions that don’t necessarily address the fundamental issues of high levels of plastic packaging use as well as genuine and current recyclability and recycling.
The UK government has the opportunity to remedy this. Under the newly elected Labour government, moving Britain to a zero waste economy is one of Defra’s five core priorities. The fifth and final INC meeting for the Global Plastics Treaty will take place in South Korea at the end of 2024. Under this new leadership, and as a member of the so-called “High Ambition Coalition”, the UK has committed to a “call for binding provisions to restrain and reduce the production and consumption of primary plastic polymers to sustainable levels” which crucially includes a legally-binding target to cut global plastic production.
In order to level the playing field we are asking Sainsbury’s and Tesco to publicly advocate for ambitious government policy and to actively push for the UK government to support a strong legally-binding target to cut global plastic production by 40% by 2040 at the Global Plastic Treaty negotiations and beyond.
As part of this investigation, we’re asking the public to sign our petition to push the supermarkets to take this action. Citizens have the power to drive change through using the strength of collective action – much like the efforts they are making to bring back soft plastic packaging waste to supermarkets.
We are calling on supermarkets to:
Significantly reduce single-use non-essential plastic packaging use, including soft plastic packaging – Continue to invest in and achieve elimination, reduction, reuse and refill voluntary targets but not by increasing the amount of single-use soft plastic packaging that is being used (i.e. lightweighting) or simply substituting it with another material.
Stop exporting collected soft plastic packaging waste – Exporting this waste stream, for either incineration for energy recovery or recycling, is not without potential ramifications on recipient countries - especially given it is hard-to-recycle.
Be transparent – Until kerbside collections are fully in place, to be more transparent and open with customers around the challenges presented by soft plastic packaging, including communicating how much and where soft plastic packaging collected is being recycled.
We need negotitators to be bold and ambitious at the Global Plastic Treaty meetings to support a legally-binding target to cut global plastic production
We are asking the UK government to urgently set the following targets:
Cutting plastic production through elimination
Set legally binding targets to reduce single-use plastic packaging by weight and unit by 2030 – For many years NGOs have been advocating for binding government targets. We are strongly urging the UK Government to put in place such a target – including building in short term milestones and mapping out long-term plans for cutting single-use plastic.
Remove plastic packaging from unprocessed fruit and vegetables by 2030 – to align with WRAP’s recommendations by building in short term milestones and mapping out long-term plans. As a reference, France introduced a ban and restrictions of fruit and vegetable plastic packaging in 2022.
Cutting plastic production through reuse and refill
Set legally binding reuse and refill targets by 2030 – NGOs have concurrently been advocating for reuse targets to complement a reduction target. This should begin with prioritisation of high impact product categories that represent the biggest environmental and economic benefit for a quick transition to reuse and refill through.
Providing financial incentives in the adoption of reuse systems – Prioritising investments and incentives to help the sector shift to reuse.
Ensuring that UK Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging legislation incentivises reuse over recycling – This includes the use of modulated fees and allocating EPR revenue for reuse.
Responsible management of plastic packaging
Ban all exports of UK plastic waste by 2027 – We strongly support the ever growing consensus for the UK to ban all of its plastic waste exports, including the EFRA Committee’s call for all UK plastic waste exports to be banned by 2027.
Introduce an immediate moratorium on new incineration and energy-from-waste capacity across the UK – including the immediate revocation of the temporary ban that was lifted in England in May 2024.
Prevent the uptake of chemical recycling as a treatment option for plastic, including packaging – This includes rejecting calls to include chemical recycling and adoption of the mass balance approach in the UK plastic packaging tax.
Recycling claims have come to misrepresent what is a limited and incomplete fix for the environmental impact of plastic packaging. Based on the associated briefing prepared by ClientEarth titled ‘Plastic recycling claims are misleading consumers’ we are asking for:
The UK CMA to intervene to ensure that plastic recycling claims are truthful and accurate, consider the full lifecycle and communicate that plastic packaging has an overall negative impact on the environment. The UK CMA must require supermarkets and other producers to substantiate claims about the recyclability of flexible plastic packaging.
Forthcoming guidance on the assessment of recyclability under the EPR scheme to contain sufficient safeguards to prevent plastic packaging without viable end markets or recycling capacity (i.e. soft plastics), from being advertised as recyclable. We support ClientEarth’s suggestion that this guidance could take inspiration from the Design for Recycling criteria to be implemented under the PPWR, which also requires consideration of the environmental impact of available recycling technologies.