The accepted donation offers range from £63,000 – £950 and are made by the businesses concerned as “enforcement undertakings”.
When found to be in breach of regulations – usually by not signing up to a packaging waste compliance scheme – a company proposes improvements to its operations and makes an offer to the Environment Agency to compensate. The Agency then decides its next course of action.
In total, the figures revealed that the accepted offers equate to nearly £300,000 of donations to a range of charities and community groups.
Packaging
The donations to charity relate to failure to comply with the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 2007.
These regulations require obligated producers to pay a proportion of the cost of the recovery and recycling of their packaging, which can be done through a producer compliance scheme.
Four of the 16 charity donations were made from subsidiaries of Pentair, which describes itself as a “global manufacturer of water and fluid solutions, valves and controls, equipment protection and thermal management products”.
Pentair SSC, a subsidiary of Pentair plc and Tyco International, made the largest contribution of £63,000 to Keep Britain Tidy (KBT).
Tyco Holdings gave around £48,000 and Pentair Technical Solutions UK Ltd nearly £10,000, to Keep Britain Tidy.
The companies have now registered with the producer compliance scheme Valpak and have revised theirpackaging waste data procedures.
Tripp LTD
Other donations accepted by the Environment Agency include a £50,000 contribution to the Woodland Trust by Tripp Limited, which sells suitcases, cabin cases and travel bags.
The offers were accepted by the Environment Agency between February and May of this year, but the figures also included details of those accepted as far back as September 2017.
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