Recycling Association Blasts PM Over Recycling Comments

During a Downing Street press conference with school children on Monday 25 October, Prime Minister Boris Johnson admitted he is ‘very worried’ about the upcoming COP26 summit, and banged his fist on the table as he insisted that recycling plastic was a ‘red herring’.

“Recycling isn’t the answer. Recycling…it doesn’t begin to address the problem,” Johnson said, “You can only recycle plastic a couple of times really. What you have got to do is stop the production of plastic, stop the first use of plastic. The recycling thing is a red herring.”

However, the chief executive of the Recycling Association, Simon Ellin said he thought the PM had ‘completely lost the plastic plot’, and said that his reaction to Johnson’s comments was ‘wow’, and that the remarks were very disappointing, reports BBC News.

Ellin agreed with the PM that there is a need to reduce the use of plastic, but with the government placing recycling at the forefront of ‘the most ground-breaking recycling legislation and plan that we’ve ever seen’, Johnson seems to be in conflict with his own government’s policy.

At a lobby briefing later that afternoon, a spokesperson for the prime minister said that his comments did not mean to disregard recycling and that the PM was saying the recycling alone is not the answer to the climate crisis.

“We’re taking a wide range of action across society to cut plastic pollution,” the spokesperson said.

“Simply relying on recycling alone as the prime minister set out would be a red herring, we need to go further and take wider action.”

If you’re looking for domestic waste clearance in London, talk to us today.