Meacher looks at packaging recovery targets of 60%

At the same time the Environment Agency is advising companies or compliance schemes who may have difficulties in obtaining their evidence for recovery (PRNs) to contact them immediately.

Environment Minister Michael Meacher is due shortly to look at the proposed targets for 2002 and is said to be watching closely how the figures for the current year will turn-out.

The UK has to conform to targets set by the European Union and as of June 30 this year should be recovering 50% of packaging waste. Data will not be given to the EU until next year and DEFRA is hoping that somehow figures for 2001 will be acceptable to the EU, even if the UK were to miss the target.

Anxiety

Some in the packaging waste sector consider that there is reason for concern within the Department for the Environmnent, Food and Rural Affairs as its its sums for 2001 could be wrong. DEFRA had calculated on different occasions that about 9.3m or 9.2m tonnes of packaging was covered under the regulations. To ensure half of this (the EU target) could be recovered it told the businesses covered by the packaging regulations that they had to recover 56% of their packaging waste. This should have meant that 4.6 million tonnes overall was recovered, with specific percentages recycled.

Now, estimates from the Environment Agency for England and Wales, SEPA in Scotland and also from the regulators in Northern Ireland are understood to suggest that only 4.4-4.5 million tonnes of material is obligated under the regulations. Environment Minister Michael Meacher in the past conceded that the targets could be missed slighlty although his former recycling minister Chris Mullin said he was confident that the targets would be reached.

While it now appears that the UK has a whole could perhaps miss the targets, there is a general view among compliance schemes that they will meet their own targets. However, the downturn in the economy as well as the possibility (according to some in the sector) that a few reprocessors are manipulating the market, may mean PRNs – packaging waste recovery notes – are in shorter supply than expected.

This has prompted the Environment Agency to urge any companies and compliance schemes who may have difficulties in obtaining PRNs to contact it now. The Agency has also written to companies reminding them of the deadlines for compliance.

Chris Grove, producer responsibility process support manager at the Agency said: “In the past compliance schemes have met their obligation. We are monitoring them now.” He added that he could not say the Agency was confident that all the schemes would comply but he had not heard of any undue concerns.
“Schemes and individual companies should wait until January 31 2002 before telling us of problems. If an individual firm of scheme has concerns they should contact us now.”