The UK has reversed its opposition to tough EU recycling targets and will now back a goal of recycling two-thirds of urban waste by 2035, the Guardian has learned. The nation’s recycling rate has stalled and it is set to miss its current target of 50 per cent by 2020.
The prime minister, Theresa May, and environment secretary, Michael Gove, have both made high-profile pledges to act on the plastic pollution that is devastating the oceans and littering the land, which May called “one of the great environmental scourges of our time”.