We have got reduced numbers of reprocessors and exporters that have applied for accreditation in 2009
Jeff Cooper, EA
According to the Environment Agency, 36 fewer exporters and reprocessors have applied for accreditation in 2009 – meaning that there could be up to a million tonnes less recycling evidence on the market compared to 2008.
The revelation came from Jeff Cooper, the Agency's producer responsibility policy manager, who was speaking at letsrecycle.com Live!'s packaging recycling summit last Thursday (December 11) in London.
Mr Cooper explained that some of the shortfall was due to companies going into administration or merging, and therefore might not be regained. But at least 310,000 tonnes out of the million tonnes would still be taking place, and could potentially count towards meeting the targets.
This is especially important, because meeting targets in 2009 is already expected by many in the sector to be a “challenge” due to instability in the markets for recovered materials (see letsrecycle.com story).
While the Agency said that it had changed the process of accreditation to make it faster, Mr Cooper explained that it could still take up to 12 weeks, and therefore urged producer compliance schemes to encourage more reprocessors to sign up as quickly as possible.
He said: “We have got reduced numbers of reprocessors and exporters that have applied for accreditation in 2009. This may be due to the low figures of PRN revenue that were occurring earlier in 2008. But one of the things we need – especially for producer compliance schemes -is to be speaking to the reprocessors that were accredited in the past to be accredited in 2009.
“It needs to be done quickly to get them back in the system. We are talking about a substantial loss of capacity,” he added.
Consultation
Looking at the broader issue of compliance, Mr Cooper said that there was expected to be a consultation on the packaging regulations in 2009 which would mainly look at a number of technical changes and “regulatory tweaks”.
In particular, he said that this may include making it compulsory for producers to join a producer compliance scheme to enable “greater scrutiny of companies' data management and monitoring systems” in a manner similar to that in operation for WEEE.
However, Mike Ankers, from H J Heinz Co Ltd, asked why this was necessary – explaining that his firm had tried both being part of a compliance scheme and acting independently, and that the latter had worked for them best.
Responding to this, Adrian Hawkes, director of policy at Valpak, claimed that it would help make sure “everyone was doing their bit” towards complying with the government's strategy.
Mr Cooper added: “Under the WEEE system some schemes are in effect individual registrants so it does not entirely preclude it,” and explained that the earliest that compulsory membership could come in would be 2010.
Code of Practice
During his talk, Mr Cooper also explained that a draft code of practice for producer compliance schemes was to be considered at a meeting in February 2009 of the Agencies and Industry Packaging Operations Liaison Group (AIPOLG) – which was set up under the auspices of the Advisory Committee on Packaging to look at the technical and administrative issues which could effect compliance.
He said: “One of the things we want to see happen is more and more emphasis on producer responsibility and self regulation” adding that it would help to make regulation less onerous and keep the costs down.
Mr Cooper also said that the Agency would be introducing “dynamic reporting” to its National Packaging Waste Database from March 2009, to provide timely data from producers, exporter and reprocessors.
The database, which was originally funded by industry, has received an extra £300,000 from devolved Environment Agencies in 2007/08.
Register for free to comment