The task force, chaired by Peter Lipscomb, has been formed by the Advisory Committee on Packaging which reports to Environment Minister Michael Meacher. It believes that while current targets can be met primarily from the industrial and commercial waste stream, targets proposed by the EU for 2006 will require a switch in focus to materials in the household waste stream.
Work by the task force has been divided up and carried out by three groups including one which has been scrutinising waste packaging flows. In particular it has looked at the amounts of material to be found in the commercial and industrial (C&I;) sector and in the household waste stream.
The growing focus on household waste comes against what is seen within the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as a successful approach to the packaging waste directive so far. This is because the recovery and recycling of packaging has risen since the legislation came into force – if this year’s target of 4.6
More paper packaging in the household needs to be collected for recycling
million tonnes is achieved there will have been a 40% increase in packaging waste recycling since 1998. And, this is against a background where many in the packaging chain, as well as the government, consider that the directive has been achieved in a much more cost effective way than on the Continent.
Household or C&I;
The big issue now is that the success to date has largely been achieved from commercial and industrial (C&I;) sources and data suggests that in the future there will need to be far more focus on household waste, especially as packaging waste directive targets will rise.
As a first step, the Advisory Committee on Packaging (ACP) task force brought together its group of experts on packaging flows to meet a broad range of representatives from a variety of sectors last week at a meeting in London.
Chaired by Phil Conran of Biffpack, the meeting sought to see whether there were any links between the targets that local authorities have to achieve and those set for packaging waste. The forum had in front of it data which clearly showed the urgent need to increase the collection of most materials from the household.
Paper
For paper, for example, there is an assumed tonnage in existence for 2001 of 3,855,000 with 1.6 million in households and 2.25 million in the C&I; sector. Last year about 1.82 million tonnes were reprocessed from the commercial sector, leaving a relatively small amount to collect for recycling in the future from this source. In contrast only about 50,000 tonnes of paper packaging (typically, cornflake boxes) was recovered from the household waste stream leaving a massive 1.55 million tonnes still available.
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