Jill Ardagh, director general of the British Soft Drinks Association, told a conference in London yesterday (February 25) that the drinks sector was increasingly receptive to consumer demands for sustainable packaging and had made gains in light-weighting and reducing waste.
We are waiting with some anticipation and obviously the whole of the industry needs to know as soon as possible what the Climate Change Act involves and also where we are with packaging with regards to Defra's waste strategy
Jill Ardagh, BSDA
The comments come in the wake of increasing pressure on retailers and manufacturers to reduce packaging, illustrated by an LGA report last week (see letsrecycle.com story).
However, Ms Ardagh said that both the Climate Change Act – which sets tough targets to reduce emissions – and Defra's overall waste strategy were crucial to helping organisations plan their way forward.
Speaking at the DrinksPack '09 event, she said: “We are waiting for the first strategy delivery programme to come forward and I think we are waiting with some anticipation and obviously the whole of the industry needs to know as soon as possible what the Climate Change Act involves and also where we are with packaging with regards to Defra's waste strategy.”
Ms Ardagh also pointed to the fact that the use of kerbside collections had already improved the quality of material being collected for reuse and that the drinks sector needed to continue to improve the recyclability of packaging.
WRAP
Following the call for more direction over drinks packaging, Mark Barthel, special advisor at WRAP, confirmed that Defra's new packaging strategy – one of the main policy document's which will govern this area – would be published in 2009.
He said: “We need to improve information flows and increase availability and continuity of household collection systems to capture packaging waste. This will be helped by UK packaging strategy, which looks set to be published in 2009.”
Defra said at a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Packaging in January that it was in the process of finalising the document, but claimed issues in the recyclate market and the economic downturn had taken precedence which meant it had been delayed from an earlier publication date of late 2008.
The main themes of the proposed strategy were revealed in November last year by Judicaelle Hammond, head of producer responsibility at Defra, who said it will focus on making the PRN system more visible and explaining the carbon gains of products to consumers (see letsrecycle.com story).
Mr Barthel also said that the grocery sector's voluntary agreement with WRAP to cut packaging waste – the Courtauld Commitment – could possibly be altered to reflect carbon gains and not tonnages diverted from landfill.
Claiming there would need to be a “long-term view” with regards to packaging targets, Mr Barthel said that this could include changing the method to measure performance.
He said: “All the packaging targets are weight based and I think that the industry view claims that this is not a very good proxy.”
In addition to the suggestion that carbon may be a better measurement of packaging sustainability, Mr Barthel claimed that changing the sustainability of packaging would be even more pertinent given the creation of the Climate Change Act.
He said: “At the moment, packaging still accounts for almost one fifth of what consumers see in their bins and consumers are looking for a more visible change but it is now communicated well what is being achieved.”
Consumers
Sonia Raja, head of packaging at supermarket giant Tesco, told the conference that consumers had been very receptive to its attempts to improve the recyclability of its packaging and reduce the wastage involved.
However, she said that she feared that some consumers believed that retailers had not made their efforts visible enough.
She said: “We have the understanding of the consumer in what we are trying to do, 65% say that they would change to alternative brands if they thought they had less packaging. Consumers also like smaller bottles because they take up less space in their cupboards, it's as simple as that.”
“I am not belittling anybody's efforts, what I am seeing is that we are not necessarily getting the right expectations and understanding from consumers and to get them to understand what we have done.”
Highlighting the supermarket chain's attempts to lightweight plastic bottles and introduce a further 45 recycling centres to the 55 currently operated at its stores nationwide, Ms Raja said individual efforts were commendable but the industry as a whole would need to work together to generate further changes in improving the sustainability of product packaging.
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