The decision has prompted strong criticism of the Agency by Cleanaway, which is owned by Australian-headquartered service industry multinational Brambles. Cleanaway described the regulator's actions as “heavy handed and predatory”. The company is to appeal against the ruling.
Compliance schemes play a major part in delivering the UK's packaging waste system. They act for large numbers of companies to ensure the businesses conform to legal requirements regarding the recovery of packaging waste.
Registration
Cleanaway revealed that the Environment Agency had not accepted its registration for 2005 last week. In a letter on April 29 to members, who include multinational companies such as Toyota and Samsung as well as household names including Superdrug and The Body Shop, Andrew Hanratty, manager of the Cleanaway compliance scheme which operates under the name Cleanapack, explained what had happened.
Mr Hanratty wrote: “Due to a slight administrative error some information was not entered on to the submission document. This was a genuine and small error and we have offered to make good the information and give proof that the information was compiled and ready for the Environment Agency on the day in question.”
Appeal
Mr Hanratty alleges that no communication was received from the Agency prior to a letter received “earlier yesterday”. He then says that the scheme is launching an appeal against the decision which comes several months after the scheme started working on its 2005 obligations.
Members are told that the compliance scheme “will work to ensure that you have a seamless solution to ensure your compliance in 2005.” Mr Hanratty told letsrecycle.com that “a variety of options were open to members and we are working extremely hard with them”.
The Environment Agency confirmed to letsrecycle.com that Cleanapack has not been accepted for registration in 2005. The Agency also pointed out that the 2005 decision did not relate to the fact that Cleanapack is one of four schemes facing “further assessment” over the meeting of its obligations in 2004. No decision on the 2004 matter has yet been reached.
Legal duty
A spokesman for the Agency said: “We are unable to comment on specific cases. In general terms we do have a legal duty to ensure that they (compliance schemes) meet all the requirements necessary to ensure that anybody who wants to use a scheme can be confident that it meets all the necessary criteria.”
Packaging waste experts speculated that the lack information supplied by Cleanaway must have been of significant enough status to lead to the Agency decision. The Agency will not comment on exactly what data is missing although Cleanaway said it was a “small error”
Far-reaching
The implications of the Cleanapack decision are seen as far-reaching and are likely to unsettle the whole UK system, some experts believe. One suggestion is that companies who were expecting to be members of the now unregistered Cleanaway scheme may have difficulty in finding another scheme that will take them on. This is because the obligation to ensure that sufficient packaging waste recovery notes were available would then pass to the new scheme.
Mr Hanratty said that the Cleanapack scheme had already obtained one third of the PRNs needed to meet its expected obligation for 2005. It is not clear what Cleanaway may now do with these PRNs which could now become available in a market where PRN prices are generally rising.
Urgent attention to the Cleanapack situation is expected to be paid by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
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