SPECIAL REPORT: Steve Gough interview

The PRN system is a live market and can react overnight. It did exactly what it says on the tin

 
Steve Gough, Valpak

Speaking to letsrecycle.com about his Stratford-upon-Avon based company and producer responsibility in general, Steve Gough explained that producers had provided a lot of money towards recycling products such as packaging and waste electrical and electronic equipment.

However, he claimed that this was often overlooked in publicity about recycling and that it was important to get the message across – particularly in the case of packaging.

He said that there had been “an extremely simple” purpose to the packaging regulations until 2008, which was to get producers to help the UK meet European recycling targets.

And, now that the deadline was over and it looked like the targets had been met, he said that it was important to recognise the achievement – especially as the system was coming under scrutiny because Defra was developing a new packaging strategy (see letsrecycle.com story).

He said: “Our point is that it has done a great job at low cost and efficiently and we have to make sure we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It is important that we improve the visibility of the successes of the system, because we have succeeded.”

He added: “The price crash was in many senses a good marketing campaign. We forced material to move by subsidising reprocessor prices. The PRN system is a live market and can react overnight. It did exactly what it says on the tin.”

As a result, Mr Gough said that Valpak was exploring the possibility of re-launching its Recycle More website to include information to “bridge the information gap.”

The site offers recycling information to the public, including a popular recycling service locator, and received 3.4 million hits last year.

He said: “Producers pay a lot into producer responsibility systems at the moment and it does not really have a flagship. There is definitely a gap there and therefore we are curious as to how we can get that message out to people.”

Market

Giving an overview of the company as a whole, Mr Gough explained that at present, Valpak holds 50-60% of the market for packaging compliance and 15% of the market for WEEE compliance and runs the WEEE distributor take-back scheme for retailers.

The company has 130 employees based in Stratford-upon-Avon and 60 who work out of its materials recycling facility in Preston.

Mr Gough explained that there were four main strands to Valpak's business: compliance; services to members; consultancy; and, the Recycle More website.

Due to the economic downturn, the company lost around 30 members at the end of 2008 and is being forced to make around 25 – 30 redundancies (see letsrecycle.com story).

However, Mr Gough was keen to stress that the job losses related to the direct material trading side of the business – and that, while Valpak was now handling smaller tonnages of material, it was still offering the same recycling and compliance services to members as it had before.

He said: “What I am really keen to get across is that while [the cut] was big in terms of tonnages, it is not touching our membership. The services to our members are continuing to grow at the levels they have always continued at. This is a key message I want to get across.”

Commenting on some of the criticism which Valpak has received, he added: “We get used to wearing the tin hat at times, but we have tried to listen a lot more to what our customers are saying and have reacted to some of our feedback. We are also in a very lucky situation in terms of the overview of where the material comes from and goes to market and try to put that in our business models.”

Mr Gough added that Valpak's consultancy arm – which comprises nine employees – was continuing to grow, commenting: “We have recently taken on three people and if the works comes in, we will continue to expand.”

Packaging

Commenting on the market for recovered materials, Mr Gough said that he expected the coming year to be “tough”.

However, he said that the PRN support had helped to keep material moving, and that things did not look as bad as they could have done.

He said: “What we are seeing is a bit of a mismatch. The economic outlook is extremely gloomy but tonnes of material seem to be moving at the same rate. We live in a tonnage world and we comply in tonnes, so while I think it is going to be difficult it should have been much more difficult than it is appearing”.

Mr Gough added that reporting reprocessor and exporter data more regularly could help to make the market more manageable when problems occurred in future.

He said: “There is an urge for reprocessors to report monthly. For everyone it is beneficial. If people could do that it would help us to plot a steady course, at least through the first half of 2009.”

WEEE

On the WEEE front, Mr Gough revealed that Valpak was receiving “extremely good feedback” from the waste disposal authorities it worked with as a WEEE producer compliance scheme.

And, looking to the current review of the WEEE system, he welcomed the government's plans to continue the distributor take-back scheme, which Valpak has been running since its inception.

“We are pleased a reincarnation of the DTS is being considered, I think we pulled something out of the fire with that project,” he said.

Future

Looking to the future, Mr Gough said that introducing producer responsibility for recycling batteries was going to be a big challenge for the UK and that Valpak wanted to play a role in providing compliance services, and had already set up its own pre-compliance scheme (see letsrecycle.com).

Under the Battery Directive, member states must meet a number of targets, including collecting 25% of portable (household) batteries for recycling by 2012. Producers will become responsible for meeting the targets from January 2010.

Mr Gough said that although the market was relatively small compared to that of packaging and WEEE, it did represent a promising business opportunity.

He said: “Around 30,000 tonnes of waste batteries arise each year, so the 25% target is equivalent to around 7,500 tonnes. That is worth around £7.5 million to share between 1-10 compliance schemes which is not a massive business but it is driven by legislation and so it is a definite market and in the current climate markets are disappearing.”

He added: “It will be a massive exercise in the next few months but our WEEE work had benefited us massively as we are using effectively the same template as for WEEE.”

Carbon

In the longer term, Mr Gough identified the carbon agenda – and possibly producer responsibility services for textiles – as routes which Valpak would explore – pointing out that some of the company's consultants were already life-cycle trained.

He said: “I think that the waste and carbon agendas will need to be brought together over the next two to three years, but in a form where people will understand it – and targets needs to be understood so that carbon benefits can be derived. We are very keen to play an active part in that. Due to our connections with data we are in an excellent place to advice and come up with something simple.”