June 2001 is the deadline for the UK to meet the requirements of the EUÕs Packaging and Packaging Waste directive. But, the deadline is by no means the end of the process for targets have to be met for the whole of 2001 and higher targets are being drawn up for future years by the European Commission.

Back in 1993 when the then Industry Secretary Michael Heseltine and Environment Secretary John Gummer first announced that the government was looking at how to meet the directiveÕs requirements, there was an almost relaxed approach from industry.

An industry approved scheme was sought by the ministers which resulted in John Gummer eventually having to squeeze the business sector to reach an agreement in 1995 which saw a sharing out of the requirements among four types of business.

At that time it was envisaged that there would probably be one organisation to help administer how the targets were achieved. V-Wrag, the precursor of Valpak, was formed but other schemes soon emerged and were encouraged by the Office of Fair Trading, which had concerns about possible anti-competition implications if there was a single organisation.

Today various measures are being advocated by the government to ensure that the collection of recyclables and the expansion of reprocessing are speeded up. Plus, the recycling targets imposed on local authorities have much of their foundation in the packaging waste regulations.

The regulations have many features. They cover four sectors of industry and give each a percentage responsibility. Using a can of baked beans sold in a supermarket as an example, this would see the raw material company which manufactured the steel having a 6% obligation, the company that turned it into a tin having a 9% obligation; the company that packed the tin with beans a 37% obligation and the supermarket which sold the can of beans a 48% obligation.

So the supermarket would have to calculate how many cans of beans it sold and how much steel was used and then its obligation would be 48% of the tonnage.

All the different companies involved then have to account for their obligation. They do not have to actually recycle the steel cans themselves or even collect the used cans. Instead they have to purchase or obtain packaging waste recovery notes. These are simply evidence that someone (officially known as a reprocessor) has carried out recycling or recovery (which generally means incineration to recover energy). The overall recovery target includes recycling.

So the supermarket can go out into the market place and buy its evidence in the form of packaging waste recovery notes (PRNs), one for every tonne of its obligation and by doing this it is helping to encourage recycling and recovery by putting money into the reprocessor's hands.

The reprocessor cannot keep all the money and is supposed to invest some of it to encourage recycling. Supervision of all this is by the Environment Agency.

The situation is complicated further in that the supermarket will not have to buy only steel PRNs for its steel obligation. If, for example, it has sold 1,000 tonnes of steel cans it will have to make sure that it has bought 13% (the 2000 figure) actually in steel PRNs so it would need 130 steel PRNs. Overall it has to recover 43% (the 2000 figure) of its obligation so it would make up the difference of 30% by buying any type of PRN.

Other key points of the legislation are:

• Businesses can act individually. But, most businesses have joined compliance schemes which organise the PRNs and other legal requirements for them.
• Businesses covered by the regulations are those with a turnover above £2 million and handling over 50 tonnes of packaging, which excludes many small firms.