A consultation on plastic waste isn’t good enough Philip Hammond – the public want action now

When it comes to green leadership, the chancellor can mouth pieties. But by only launching a ‘consultation’ on plastic waste and allowing polluters to carry on in the meantime, he is showing his true colours

The UK is running out of places to send our waste (Reuters)

A year ago, the chancellor stood at the despatch box, waxed lyrical about the BBC’s Blue Planet II series and promised to make the UK “a world-leader in tackling the scourge of plastic”. One year on, Monday’s budget killed off the idea of a “latte levy”, and announced yet another consultation on a single use plastics tax which gives the plastics industry until 2022 to carry on polluting. He has broken his promise to the British people.

Over the last decade Brits have gone from being a nation of tea drinkers to a nation of coffee lovers. Cold pressed, slow roasted, skinny mocha, soy lattes - we have embraced the infinite varieties of coffee. But whatever your choice, they all have one inconvenient thing in common. They come in cardboard cups with a plastic liner. And though most people pop them in a recycling bin, fewer than 1 in 400 cups is recycled.

Over 2.5 billion disposable coffee cups are landfilled, littered or incinerated in the UK every year – enough to stretch around the world five and a half times. People have started to wake up to Britain’s mountain of coffee cup waste; it is common to see people on buses and trains with reusable portable coffee cups. Organisations are changing, including parliament, which has phased out non-compostable takeaway cups, food containers and cutlery. People and businesses have shown they are willing to change – but sadly the chancellor has ducked his chance to tackle single use plastics.

A 25p charge or “latte levy” on single-use cups to discourage their use and fund new “binfrastructure” was the top recommendation to drive up recycling and reduce waste made by the cross-party Environmental Audit Committee in January. We wanted to nudge coffee drinkers to realise that their cups took 5 seconds to make, 5 minutes to use, and 500 years to biodegrade in landfill.

We know a charge would work. The 5p plastic bag charge is proof, with 9 billion fewer bags used since it was introduced 2 years ago. Charges are more effective than discounts at changing consumer behaviour because we respond better to avoiding a loss than gaining a reward.

Industry is interested. Starbucks introduced a latte levy in some central London cafes and the number of customers using reusable cups more than doubled, so they are rolling it out to all UK stores. Consumers support the idea – they want government to help them do the right thing and protect the planet.

We also need a fundamental redesign of the UK’s packaging system. Packaging Recovery Notes are intended to make companies show their products are recycled after use. But an investigation by the National Audit Office found that the system is open to fraud and error, that waste is exported with no guarantee that it will be recycled, and that cash-strapped councils are left to pay 90 per cent of the cost of recycling, instead of the producers.

The Environment Agency is now investigating allegations that plastic waste exporters are falsely claiming for tens of thousands of tonnes of plastic waste which might not exist: British exporters claim to have shipped over 35,000 tonnes more plastic than HMRC recorded leaving the UK.

The UK is running out of places to send our waste. Since China closed its doors to imports of UK plastic waste in January, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia have followed suit. As the dominoes fall on the UK waste export industry, the chancellor should have taken swift action to support a domestic recycling industry, which would create green jobs in every nation and region of the UK.

We have had thousands of warm words from government on tackling plastic. But we are stuck in a groundhog day farce in which consultation follows consultation and ministers announce more announcements and do nothing.

The chancellor’s approach to single use plastic is the same as St Augustine’s approach to chastity – “grant me it, O Lord, but not yet”. When it comes to green leadership, the chancellor can mouth pieties. Yet his budget allows plastic polluters to carry on regardless.

Mary Creagh is the Labour Party MP for Wakefield