Booklet set to tackle blame culture over packaging

Entitled ‘Partnership and Packaging: Working together to optimise environmental performance', the document stresses that everyone, including manufacturers and retailers, want as little packaging as possible, but that some is “essential” to protect products and prevent further waste. It also explains why councils cannot recycle every kind of packaging waste.

It has been developed by PRAG – a cross-sector group including representatives from local and central government, manufacturers and retailers and waste management companies – in a bid to stop blame for the waste being pinned on groups such as retailers or councils, as it has been in the past.

While PRAG gave no examples of this, the Local Government Association – which is no longer represented in the group – has, over the past few years, routinely attacked producers for not doing enough to reduce packaging (see letsrecycle.com story), while some producers have also criticised councils for their recycling services (see letsrecycle.com story).

Jane Bickerstaffe, director of the Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment (INCPEN) and member of PRAG, told letsrecycle.com that the booklet would hopefully “take some of the heat out of the debate” and establish a united position, based on the facts.

She said: “There has been a tendency in the last few years for some of the mainstream media to shout at retailers and councils in particular as they are the ones in the firing line. But we all want the same things.

“One of the things which came out early on is that we suffer from inconsistent information. We wanted to identify some key messages and take the kind of questions that councils and retailers regularly get asked by the public.”

Reference

The booklet is intended to be used by PRAG members – such as Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Veolia, LARAC, Coca-Cola and WRAP -as an internal reference document and for their members and other networks to use as a basis for their communications – especially when talking to the media.

It includes a list of common questions faced by retailers and councils about packaging – such as why so much is needed and why councils collect different materials at the kerbside – and endeavours to provide straightforward answers.

The booklet was designed specifically by the communications working group of PRAG, which is chaired by Rachel Cowburn of Unilever and counts figures such as Joy Blizzard from the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee, Alice Roberts from the Waste Improvement Network and Duncan Simpson from Valpak amongst its membership.

PRAG was set up in 2008 to help improve the impacts of packaging, optimise the amount of packaging used, increase the quantity and quality of used household packaging collected for recycling, increase recovery and develop consistent information about packaging and recycling for opinion formers and the public (see letsrecycle.com story).

It also has a working group looking at packaging design, which last year published a guidance to help designers improve the recyclability of their packaging (see letsrecycle.com story).

The PRAG steering group is set to next meet in late May in order to exchange information on packaging after the General Election.