Maria Eagle – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Maria Eagle on 2014-04-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what criteria a biodegradable plastic bag will need to fulfil for exemption from his single use plastic bag charging policy.

Dan Rogerson

We intend to exempt biodegradable bags that meet certain standards from the charge to give consumers an alternative to using single-use plastic bags when they do not take a reusable bag with them. The standards will be worked up in consultation with industry. They are likely to cover how the bag should behave during disposal or recycling (for example, having a short degradation time period), resource use, energy consumption during production and other elements across their lifecycle.