Jessica Baker, of Suffolk-based Chase Plastics, warned yesterday: “If the regulations stay as they are I can see that there will not be much UK recycling left.”
New data issued this month has shown that for the first time over a quarter of packaging waste reprocessing under the Packaging Regulations occurred abroad – the figure was just 4% back in 1998.
Emphasising the importance of exports, domestic reprocessing levels have dropped slightly since last year, partly because of the reduction in misreported reprocessing data and fraudulently-issued plastics PRNs. Increasing exports are leading to increased competition for plastic bottles collected by local authorities.
Outsourcing
Ms Baker said that exporters have an advantage by effectively outsourcing sorting and reprocessing abroad, since it means much lower costs than domestic reprocessors face – but exporters can issue export PRNs (PERNs) that are the same value as domestically-issued PRNs.
Responding to Ms Baker, Defra's Sheila McKinley said it was a complicated issue not currently regulated by the Packaging Regulations, and because of European single market rules it would be difficult to put in place measures to protect domestic reprocessing above exporting.
She conceded it was an important issue, however, saying: “I am not saying we are sitting back thinking this doesn't matter. We have created a market and that market is increasingly shifting towards exporting material for reprocessing – simply because it is cheaper to do the sorting in China. There is a problem there.”
John Turner, chairman of the government's Advisory Committee on Packaging had drawn up a group specifically to look at the issue, Mrs McKinley revealed.
Fraud
The Defra head of responsibility advised people not to “run away with the idea” that there was significant levels of fraud in the export of packaging waste, however, since “there wasn't any evidence of fraud” found in recent investigations into the plastics packaging recovery sector.
However, speaking at a “Reducing Packaging Waste” conference in London yesterday, the Environment Agency's Chris Grove confirmed that there is some inappropriate issuing of plastic PRNs occurring. He said the Agency is currently in the process of writing to two packaging waste compliance schemes to point out that they have each bought over 1,000 tonnes worth of PRNs from a reprocessor that is only accredited to issue less than 400 tonnes worth in 2005.
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