Single use items (2021)

Request

How many single use disposable items have been sold on the parliamentary estate from 01/01/2020 and to date? (Including coffee and hot beverage cups, cold beverage cups, cutlery, drink stirrers, straws, sauce sachets, plastic and paper bags.)
Did you implement a surcharge on single-use cups to incentivize the use of keep cups? If so how many single use cups were sold in the 6 months preceding the charge implementation and how many cups were sold after?
Do you still include a surcharge on single-use items? If not, what informed the change in this policy?

Response

Please note that our response only deals with catering venues and retail outlets on the parliamentary estate which are run by the House of Commons. Some catering venues and retail outlets are run by the House of Lords, which is a separate public authority for the purposes of the EIRs. You may therefore wish to consider forwarding your request to the House of Lords for any relevant information they may hold.

1. How many single use disposable items have been sold on the parliamentary estate from 01/01/2020 and to date? (Including coffee and hot beverage cups, cold beverage cups, cutlery, drink stirrers, straws, sauce sachets, plastic and paper bags.)

Some information is held by the House of Commons in relation to this part of your request. We hold information about single-use cups, plastic bags and paper bags.

From October 2018, a single-use cup charge was levied in House of Commons catering venues. We hold information about the number single-use cups charged for since then, until the charge was temporarily suspended in April 2020.

We also hold information about the number of plastics bags charged for at catering venues. These plastic bags are used for sales of souvenir items.
Information on the number of plastic bags for the period between January 2020 and the date of your request

Lastly, we also hold information about the number of plastics bags and paper bags charged for at retail outlets. Between 1 January 2020 and 13 September 2021:

• 3,262 paper bags were charged for
• 106 plastics bags were charged for

It may help you to know that this time period includes the point at which our Retail team chose to phase out plastic bags in favour of paper bags. In any case, we also encourage purchase of Bags for Life in our retail outlets, with several budget and premium options to choose from.

In accordance with the exception provided by Regulation 12(4)(a) of the EIRs, we can confirm that no other information relating to this part of your request is held by the House of Commons. We do not hold information about the sales of other disposable items, such as cutlery, stirrers, straws etc, because customers are not charged for them.

2. Did you implement a surcharge on single-use cups to incentivize the use of keep cups? If so how many single use cups were sold in the 6 months preceding the charge implementation and how many cups were sold after?

Some information is held by the House of Commons in relation to this part of your request.

The single-use cups surcharge was introduced to help reduce waste produced in Parliament by encouraging customers to use reusable cups. Although reusable keep cups are available for customers to purchase, the surcharge was not intended to increase their sales.

We do not hold information about the number of single-use cups sold in the six months preceding the implementation of the charge, because the records we hold are only about how many times the charge was levied. The number of times the charge was levied in the six months after it was introduced is included in the first attachment referred to above.

In accordance with the exception provided by Regulation 12(4)(a) of the EIRs, we can confirm that no other information relating to this part of your request is held by the House of Commons.

3. Do you still include a surcharge on single-use items? If not, what informed the change in this policy?

This information is held by the House of Commons.

The single-use cup charge was suspended in April 2020 due to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Around this time, a series of safety measures were introduced to help reduce the spread of Covid-19, including reducing contact/touch points between customers and team members. To facilitate the reduction of the contact/touch points in catering venues, compostable crockery and cutlery was used instead of china and other reusable items. It was decided to suspend the surcharge whilst these measures were in place.