“Climate change is now acting as a locomotive pulling a train load of other environmental issues further up the political agenda particularly among highly connected millennials.”
All the UK’s main political parties have focused on the issues of tackling climate change and single-use plastics in their manifestos.
Last week, the Labour Party launched its political document and put green issues at the top section of its manifesto – the first time one of the UK’s two major parties has done so. It pledged to “take on the global plastics crisis by investing in a new plastics remanufacturing industry creating thousands of jobs, ending exports of plastic waste and reducing our contribution to ocean pollution”.
In its manifesto, the Labour Party also said it would appeal to votes with policies including an £11bn windfall tax on oil and gas companies and a million new jobs in a “green industrial revolution”.
Commenting on the Labour Party manifesto, Rebecca Newsom, head of politics at Greenpeace UK told Bio Market Insights: “This manifesto takes the climate and nature emergency seriously.”
However, Newsom added that its manifesto “still stops short of getting full marks at this stage”, adding there must be a commitment to radically reduce the use of single-use plastic.
The Conservative Party also pledged to tackle single-use plastics and climate change in its manifesto, which it released yesterday (24 November). In its manifesto, the party claimed that it would continue to “lead the world in tackling plastics pollution, both in the UK and internationally, and will introduce a new levy to increase the proportion of recyclable plastics in packaging”.