Agency reports decline in PRN accreditations

The number of exporters and UK reprocessors accredited to issue packaging waste recovery notes (PRNs) has fallen compared to this time last year.

The decline in accreditations has prompted fears that UK recycling targets may be harder to meet in future if less recycling is recorded because fewer reprocessors issues PRNs.

According to Environment Agency data, just 49 exporters and 120 reprocessors were approved to issue PRNs and their export equivalent, PERNS, by January 27th 2012.

This compares to 79 exporters and 127 reprocessors being approved at the same time in January 2011 representing an 18% fall in accreditations overall and a 38% fall in exporter accreditations.

Under the PRN system, companies which reprocess or export waste packaging have to pay for accreditation by the Environment Agency if they wish to be able to sell packaging recycling evidence. The businesses can then sell the evidence to packaging producers who have packaging recycling targets to meet.

However, it is understood that the low price of PRNs and PERNs over the last couple of years has acted as a disincentive for companies to sign up especially in the case of metals such as aluminium, where the packaging material itself can be worth 1,000 a tonne.

Reduction

Commenting on the figures, an Environment Agency spokeswoman said: With regards to the number of accredited exporters, there has been a reduction in the number of accreditations for 2012 compared to the same time last year.

The biggest area of reduction in accredited exporters is in steel and aluminium. In some cases we have seen operators who previously applied for both reprocessor and exporter accreditations only apply for reprocessor accreditation. Some of these operators never used the exporter accreditation and so have only applied for the reprocessor accreditation his year.

The spokeswoman added that the year-on-year data for reprocessors did not show much change and pointed out that companies can sign up at any time during the compliance year, meaning that the number of companies accredited in 2012 is likely to grow. In 2011, another 9 exporters and 15 reprocessors were approved after January 27th.

The spokeswoman said: There is always some movement of operators coming into the system and others leaving and not seeking to be re-accredited. In addition we always see further operators coming in the system during the year.

Despite the fall, the Agency said it did not have concerns about how this might impact on the ability of UK businesses to meet their packaging recycling targets.

The spokeswoman said: Overall we do not have any significant concerns that the capacity to raise PRN evidence has been impacted by the variation in accreditations between this year and last year.”

ACP

Bob Lisney, chair of the governments Advisory Committee on Packaging, said he thought the fall was a reflection of the low price of PRNs.

In a dynamic market place people will not pay money if there is no return, he said.

And, he said this could cause problems further down the line if packaging recycling performance from these businesses was not recorded and could not count against the targets prompting a need for a separate way of recording packaging recycling performance.

He said: We need to find a mechanism of keeping everyone in the tent. It does not have to be immediately but when we get to 2017 if we are getting high levels of recovery is might look like we are not hitting the targets. We need to differentiate the PRN market from the system of counting achievement in recycling but that is a lot easier said than done.

Mr Lisney said the ACP, which expects to publish an annual report in May 2012, had raised the issue with the government and it was something which would be looked at its next committee meeting.