DEFRA is asking for anyone interested in sitting on the committee to complete an application pack to take up one of the dozen or more posts available for which interviews will be carried out next month. Closing date is July 1 2002. The committee exists to provide a link between industry and ministers and in particular the businesses who are covered by the regulations.
The new committee is likely to have a sharper focus than its predecessor, which was chaired by the late Sir Peter Parker. The issues seen as confronting the government and industry are now considered to be far different from the early days of the packaging waste regulations. Sir Peter Parker himself told Michael Meacher last autumn that a committee was needed “with an operational capability as well as a policy role”. To what extent Sir Peter expected the committee to have an operational role is unclear, although the new committee chairman is likely to be paid for his work and have much more say in how the UK delivers the regulations. This partly reflects the fact that DEFRA itself is grappling with a number of other producer responsibility challenges such as waste electronics and junk mail.
Among changes on the committee are that it will have a place for a representative of a small compliance scheme and also for a reprocessor. Applicants will have to fit with a number of criteria including stating which sector of the industry they represent.
John Turner, who has recently retired as the long-serving chief executive of Valpak is widely tipped as chairman of the new committee although he may face competition for the post. Sir Peter Parker said that the next chairman – who will be paid by DEFRA – should “be a senior, independent member of industry with a good knowledge of the industries and issues involved and able to take an operational as well as a policy approach.”
Although much of the packaging waste needed for the UK to meet higher packaging recycling targets in the future will come from household waste, local authorities will not be represented on the new committee. There will however, be a place for Jennie Price, chief executive of WRAP, the Waste and Resources Action Programme.
Local authority input will come through working groups set up by the main committee which are also likely to include representatives of the waste management industry.
Application forms are available from DEFRA, email: daniel.kapadia@defra.gsi.gov.uk
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