That was the warning from DHL's specialist packaging compliance division, which said franchise-like “symbol groups” like Spar, Nisa and Budgens now face “significant and onerous tasks” to meet the new packaging regulations.
 Groups of small retailers like Spar are now caught within the producer responsibility regulations for packaging waste |
And, it complained that detailed guidance on new responsibilities for packaging waste was made available only after the new regulations came into force.
Paul James, general manager of DHL's Environmental Compliance Solutions unit, said in many cases franchise companies have only a few weeks to gather extensive data on their use of packaging to meet the regulations.
Mr James said: “While the additional cost to symbol groups is unknown, there is a potentially significant and onerous task of data capture from small retail outlets. Chasing local managers or symbol group members for weights of packaging could prove problematic for symbol groups, who may not have the systems in place to easily capture and calculate the weight of all relevant packaging sold via third party outlets.”
Regulations
The difficulties stem from the 2005 producer responsibility regulations, which came into force last month (see letsrecycle.com story). The regulations effectively shared out the costs of meeting UK packaging recycling targets among a greater number of companies that deal with significant quantities of packaging.
As well as companies that lease out re-usable packaging, the regulations now make franchise businesses, pub-operating companies and symbol groups liable to pay for a share of UK packaging recycling. Previously, obligations were placed on individual businesses within a franchise chain, not the franchise as a whole, and many individual businesses proved too small to meet the regulation's threshold.
DHL's environmental compliance solutions unit – part of logistics giant Exel before December's 3.8 billion acuisition of Exel by DHL – advises a large proportion of retailers in the fast-moving consumer goods market on packaging recovery issues.
Mr James said: “In practical terms, these new guidelines come into force with immediate effect, meaning that symbol groups will need to include the additional packaging data handled by the outlets they supplied during 2005. This does not leave much time for data gathering, which could be a significant challenge in some cases, as some compliance schemes request data to be submitted to them by the 28th February ahead of the April 7th regulatory deadline.”
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He added: “Having gone through two consultations last year covering potential changes to the packaging waste regulations, symbol groups in the know have been aware of these new requirements for some time. It is only now that the details on definitions, allocations and costs have been made available.
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