Petition · past parliament

All Plastic Packaging to be classified as Toxic Waste.

Rejected 10 signatures

What the petition asks

Millions of tons of packaging plastic end up in our oceans killing billions of sea life creatures & sea birds. Additionally Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) found in many food & drink packaging plastics is proposed to have an estrogenic activity in the human endocrine system. Plastic is Toxic.
PCB effects study
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1480489/

Plastic in our oceans
https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/what-we-do/oceans/plastics/

Why it was rejected

It was not clear what the petition asked the UK Government or Parliament to do.

We can't accept your petition because we aren't sure what action you would like the UK Government or Parliament to take. It's not clear how you would like plastic to be treated differently.

The UK doesn't classify waste as "toxic". Some waste is defined as hazardous. This is subject to different waste labelling rules and may require certain special disposal depending on its nature:

https://www.gov.uk/how-to-classify-different-types-of-waste

You could start a new petition setting out clearly what rules you think there should be around the disposal of plastic waste.

Timeline

22 Mar 2019 Petition opened for signatures
15 Apr 2019 Rejected by the Petitions Committee

Key facts

Signatures 10
Status Rejected
Rejected 15 Apr 2019

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Source: the official petition page. Last checked 15 Jul 2026.