May’s war on waste: a bid to save the planet - or the Tories?

Theresa May will today outline a number of measures designed to tackle our “throwaway culture” in a new 25-year environment plan.

“In years to come, I think people will be shocked at how today we allow so much plastic to be produced needlessly,” the Prime Minister will say. “In the UK alone the amount of single-use plastic wasted every year would fill 1,000 Royal Albert Halls.”

The plan includes urging supermarkets to introduce plastic-free aisles, where all food is loose and shoppers bring their own containers, says The Times.

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There are also proposals to charge for takeaway boxes, to extend the 5p bag charge to small shops, to introduce funding for plastics innovation, to help developing countries tackle pollution, and to plant a Northern Forest of 50 million trees between Liverpool and Hull.

But commentators have suggested that the Government may have a hidden agenda.

“The Tories took a hammering at the election on animal welfare, and No. 10 has been desperate to transform the party’s image ever since,” says Politico’s Jack Blanchard.

“The new year is bringing a rebranding of sorts, aimed squarely at young voters who eschewed the Conservative pro-fox hunting crowd in the 2017 election.”

Writing in The Times, former Downing Street communications chief Katie Perrior says that “Theresa May’s enthusiasm for protecting the environment may not be insincere - but it is certainly new”.

“The pretext for today’s speech is the 25-year environment plan,” Perrior says. “When I was at No. 10, Andrea Leadsom, then the environment secretary, was told to make the plan as boring as possible. She duly delivered, and it sat on a shelf gathering dust.”

Downing Street insiders reportedly also have doubts about the Government’s motives. Some question “whether May’s heart is really in it”, says BuzzFeed’s Emily Ashton.

But the “early reaction to the plan should please No. 10”, says The Times’s Matt Chorley.

“Even Caroline Lucas, the co-leader of the Green Party, struggled to find fault.”

“I doubt their motives a lot [but] in a sense you could argue their motives don’t matter as long as they’re doing the right thing,” Lucas told Buzzfeed.

However, Greenpeace UK described the plan as a “missed opportunity”.

“It’s good that the Government wants to make tackling plastic waste a priority, but the specific measures announced today don’t match the scale of the environmental crisis we face,” said senior oceans campaigner Louise Edge.