Producer responsibility ‘unsuccessful’ for councils

Producer responsibility has not been successful in ensuring local authorities receive appropriate funds to deal with waste products, according to the Environmental Industries Commission (EIC).

In a report published last week the EIC, the trade association for the UKs environmental technology and services industry, said that the private sector needs to pick up the tab to cover the environmental impacts of their products.

The report Driving Resource Efficiency for a Competitive Britain looks at the action the government has taken to increase resource efficiency. However it finds that the progress made by the government is falling well short of what is required to handle the increasing amount of waste Britain is generating.

Commenting on the report Adrian Wilkes, chairman of EIC, said: There can be no doubt that the benefits of resource efficiency are huge – yet the Government is failing to take significant co-ordinated action. This is undermining policies aimed at tackling key environmental challenges such as climate change, whilst damaging the UKs international competitiveness in a world facing rising prices for all raw materials. That is why we are launching this report and our call for more action.

In order to achieve the goals of a strong economy that operates within its environmental limits we must be much more efficient in the way we use scare resources to produce goods and services.

Producer responsibility

“There can be no doubt that the benefits of resource efficiency are huge – yet the Government is failing to take significant co-ordinated action. This is undermining policies aimed at tackling key environmental challenges.”

– Adrian Wilkes, EIC

In the producer responsibility chapter of the report, the EIC said that, in theory, producer responsibility means action taken by producers to reduce the environmental impact of products, for example changing its design.

However in practice the EIC said that much of the focus has been on the end of life. While this has led to the increase in collection and management of the waste the EIC said it has not been successful in ensuring appropriate funds are apportioned back to those left to deal with the waste product, which in many cases are local authorities.

The EIC said that action needs to be taken to make this happen. The report states: There is no reason why overall costs should rise indeed there are clear opportunities for transferring costs from local government back onto product supply chains, for instance but measurement systems, methods and principles of implementation need to be coordinated, consistent and transparent. Over the last 20 years, the UK has not been successful in achieving those simple objectives.

We believe that producer responsibility should be about more than making sure that the private sector picks up the tab for the environmental impacts of their products.

Action

Elsewhere in the report the EIC said that while it welcomes the governments ambitions to work towards a resource efficient economy, but more action is required. This includes:

• Putting in place a framework of indicators and benchmarks on resource efficiency for each industrial sector;
• Requiring the Environment Agency to put a high priority on resource efficiency under IED and to publish a regular report on the resource efficiency gains achieved;
• Requiring reporting on environmental issues, including resource efficiency, in the Operating and Financial Review, building on the recently-announced requirement for carbon reporting;
• Making a clear commitment to sustainable public procurement, with clear, long-term targets for improving energy and resource efficiency in all Government procurement, and requiring that all future public private partnership / projects must meet high resource efficiency standards.