Contribution
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, and I commend him on bringing forward the Bill and introducing it so powerfully. I join him in commending the Women’s Institute, which has been campaigning on this issue since 2017. Indeed, the title of its campaign, “End Plastic Soup”, gave me a phrase that I use very often. I have spoken to many grass-roots members of the Women’s Institute, who I know are very passionate about the issue, as well as those who are actually leading the campaign.
The noble Lord, Lord Randall, said—this is worth stressing—that about 60% or more of the fabrics produced in the world today are synthetic; they are plastic. It tends to be, broadly, the cheaper clothing that is made from these synthetic fibres, so we are also addressing an equality issue here, because we are going to see more synthetic fibres in poorer areas worn by poorer people, which is something that I will come back to. Some 9.4 trillion microplastic fibres are released from clothing per week in the UK. That is one of those numbers that is so large as to be almost unimaginable, but it stresses that the term “plastic soup”, as used by the Women’s Institute, is exactly the right terminology.
The noble Lord, Lord Randall, addressed some of the arguments we are inevitably going to hear against this. I think we will also hear about what we have seen happening internationally: the French Parliament legislated to have microfibre filters by 2025 but has failed to implement it, and the California State Assembly passed a similar Bill in 2023 but has seen resistance. We have seen claims that we are not really sure how much it is going to filter out and what consumers are going to do with what is filtered out—all of these issues. But I think the argument is that this is a major issue, on which you could have an iterative process of development with the manufacturers to make sure we bring in the law and we work out the details of exactly how it is structured—something that would appropriately happen in a statutory instrument. The Government could, as the noble Lord said, take this forward in the forthcoming water Bill.
Every time I speak about plastic pollution, I report a far-from-comprehensive list of the new reasons for concern about the wider, interrelated human, animal and environmental health impacts, particularly of microplastics and nanoplastics. I have talked before about how the placentas of babies born prematurely have higher plastic concentrations than the placentas from full-term births. I could add a further list about the 16,000 chemicals present in plastic, the impact of many of which we have no idea about, but I have a time limit. Let us see what we have learned recently about microplastic and nanoplastic pollution.
Patients with lung cancer in Greece, according to a report published just this week, had 20% more microplastics in their lung fluid samples. That is from a study from the European Respiratory Society. In Lake Geneva, Switzerland, which has probably some of the world’s best water treatment facilities—absolutely world-leading—they have found that the concentration of microplastics in the lake measuring between one and 100 micrometres may have been underestimated by more than 650-fold.
The New York Times picked up on a report from Cornell University in 2024 that found that, on average, people in Indonesia are consuming 15 grams of plastic particles every month, the weight of three credit cards. The New York Times is looking into the detail of this—and, if noble Lords have not seen it, it is well worth looking at. A large amount of that is waste from the global North that is shipped to Indonesia and dealt with inappropriately.
I declare my position as a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Microplastics and note that that group has a report just out reflecting on the potential impacts on food security in the UK from the microplastics in the soil. It is not hard to see how you go from the washing machine to the river to the soil. This is a critical issue: the planetary boundary for novel entities has been far exceeded. We need to do everything we can.
This Bill is a modest step but an important one to take. I particularly stress the importance of Clause 2(1)(b), about raising awareness of the consequences of microplastics in closing through the laundry cycle—although, if I was to put down a friendly amendment, it would suggest that we should expect the Government to educate the public generally about microplastics and the potential damage. I ask the Minister if the Government have any plans for this. I refer back to the passage of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act and our attempts to think about what is in our school uniforms and the plastics that they are filled with. Will the Government do something to educate the public about microplastics generally?