Mr Turner, who has been one of the driving forces behind the development of the packaging waste regulations in the UK, has decided not to re-apply for his post during the committee’s routine re-selection process in order to concentrate on other business interests.
This means he will be chairing the committee’s final annual meeting today but will not be sitting on the new-look committee when it meets in January 2010.
He will also be leaving his post as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Farm Plastics, a subsidiary of the ACP which has been advising the government on the development of draft producer responsibility regulations governing material such as silage wrap and crop covers, which were published for consultation this month (see letsrecycle.com story).
Mr Turner has been ACP chairman for seven years since succeeding the late Sir Peter Parker in 2002 (see letsrecycle.com story) and for five years before that was chief executive of the Valpak packaging compliance scheme.
Coca-Cola
He also spent about four years at the very early stages of the packaging regulation development as manufacturing and purchasing director at Coca-Cola and Schweppes Beverages.
His work saw him recognised in the 2005 New Year’s Honours List, when he was awarded an OBE (see letsrecycle.com story).
Speaking to letsrecycle.com on the eve of his departure, Mr Turner explained that he was involved with the design of the packaging waste recovery note (PRN) system from the very early stages when there was lots of debate about how the obligations of the EC Directives on Packaging and Packaging Waste should be divided up between different parties in the packaging supply chain.
And, he said that the success of the system was evident when the UK met its European target to recycle 60% of packaging waste by the end of 2008 (see letsrecycle.com story) – up from approximately 30% in 1998. This was something which he explained had taken a lot of hard work on all sides.
He said: “The main achievement is that at the end of 2008 the UK met its EU targets. That was by design. We were watching every step of the way, making alterations to the regulations and improving them and dealing with issues as and when they arose.
“The system has now been amply tested under varying conditions and, this year, under extreme conditions with particular regard to steel.”
Issues
To help reach this point, Mr Turner said that there had been a lot of fine-tuning of the legislation and the ACP had had to deal with various material-specific issues and those relating to exports.
He added that the creation of the National Packaging Waste Database – an online PRN and PERN trading platform set up in 2006 – helped to revolutionise the whole system. The database was set up with £500,000 from industry and was delivered with help from the Packaging Federation by a joint ACP and Environment Agency Task Force.
“While this took a bit of delivering,” said Mr Turner, “we managed to get rid of paper PRNs and PERNs at that time. Now it is by electronic trading which has made great improvements to the efficiency of the system”.
Achievements
When asked to sum up what he thought were some significant achievements, Mr Turner said that he was pleased to have been among a core group of people who had helped deliver a producer responsibility system at least cost to business – something he said that he hoped would remain the case going forward.
He said: “It is a shared approach to delivering compliance with the targets at least cost to industry. There is no-one that could argue that that has not been achieved. That would be my memory of it. There were lots of hiccups along the way but we got there and industry managed to do that at much lower cost compared to other European states, such as Germany.”
Future
Looking to the future, Mr Turner argued that it was still a big challenge to engage local authorities with the packaging regulations because half of all packaging arose in the domestic waste stream but councils were not obligated under the legislation.
Public frustration about the lack of standardisation with regards to local authority recycling services and varying quality of material which government needs to address, according to the outgoing chairman. His view is clear: “They really do need to do something about that to ensure there is a standard approach and that the quality of material including from MRFs (materials recycling facilities) is sorted out.”
Mr Turner added that there was a general perception that councils received no funds from producers to help recycle packaging when in fact the whole process was subsidised by PRNs, and that creating more transparency was paramount. This issue is to be addressed on a consultation on the packaging regulations early in 2010 which would also look at increasing business targets from 2011-2020.
He said: “Government wants to increase performance – they want to get to the 70-75% mark and I want to support that. But nothing is done for nothing and the trick is to ensure that it is achieved at sensible cost.”
Indebted
Overall, Mr Turner said that he was “indebted” to members of the ACP who had given up so much of their time to dealing with challenges over the years and also to those who had taken part in the many task forces set up to deal with particular issues.
He said: “We were lucky having a team of people who were very committed to making a difference.”
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