Packaging industry failing to engage public on waste

Speaking at the inaugural lecture of the Environmental Services Association in London, Professor Jacqueline McGlade, executive director of the European Environment Agency (EEA) said: “The UK system has appeared to achieve compliance at low cost for industry – but does it operate at the lowest cost to society?

” I attended a meeting with the UK packaging industry earlier this week. There is a genuine problem here, the industry laid the blame very firmly at the foot of the consumer.“
– Prof Jacqueline McGlade, EEA
“There is a lack of public involvement and a lack of public awareness of environmental issues compared to other countries,” she said.

The EEA receives funding support from the European Commission which is known to pay close attention to its thinking.

Professor McGlade said that in terms of targets the UK had overall met its packaging waste targets. “What gets measured gets done. But we need to tackle arisings, reducing the volume of these has really remained only as an objective with limited awareness measures.”

Problem
She went on to attack the attitude of the packaging sector in the UK. “I attended a meeting with the UK packaging industry earlier this week. There is a genuine problem here, the industry laid the blame very firmly at the foot of the consumer.”

Pouring scorn on this view, the professor reasoned: “If Coca Cola said the consumer was going to have to drink Coca Cola out of brown paper bags they would do it. They need to have a different perspective on this.”

Her comments come after the recent publication of an EEA report on packaging waste. This found that overall volumes of packaging waste actually increased in the countries by 7% between 1997 and 2001. In Ireland, packaging waste increased by 36%. The report suggests that the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive fails in its main objective because hard targets have not been set for the volumes of waste packaging created.

The report noted that for recycling packaging waste, Austria comes out top in the league tables going beyond the Directive's targets. Similarly, Denmark and the UK have met their obligations. Ireland, the highest producer of packaging waste per person in the EU (214kg per person annually compared with 122kg in Austria), has nevertheless met its targets for recycling packaging waste.

In the UK, packaging producers have responsibility to pay for recycling and recovery of packaging waste – and the regulations also give them a responsibility to educate the public on the issue of packaging waste. But, the education obligation is only vaguely defined.