Speaking exclusively to letsrecycle.com last week (January 27), Mr Gough said Valpak, which also offers other compliance, consultancy and recycling services, delivered “good value” compliance to its members during the year and extended its data services. The company also carried over a large amount of packaging recycling evidence into 2015.
Commenting on the 2014 packaging compliance period, he said; “We finished the year strong in terms of material carried forward into 2015 which we think will help the 2015 market in general. I think overall we have had a really good year”.
PRN system
Discussing the PRN system more broadly, Mr Gough said he believed the system is fit for the years after 2017 when higher recycling targets for businesses are widely expected.
Whether the PRN system is sustainable going forward is one of the things currently being looked at by Defra.
“There is a lot of talk in industry about this at the moment”, Mr Gough commented, adding that there were three factors to take into account.
First, he said the system relied on how high the targets were set, adding that the gap between current performance and potential future targets may not be “as great as people think”.
Secondly, he said it depended on whether the PRN system as a whole had been proven to work over the long term, to which he said he thought it had, and that any small problems there were could be “ironed out”.
Compliance fee
Lastly, Mr Gough said that a compliance fee – similar to that for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment– could provide “an alternative mechanism at a sensible price for the system to be maintained year on year on year” in situations when “world events caused difficulties in the market”. A compliance fee could be a fee that producers or their producer compliance schemes might choose to pay if they failed to achieve their packaging recycling target.
Summing up his thoughts on the PRN system, Mr Gough said: “I think people are writing it off at the moment, saying it will never do this and never do that and it will never do the other. But actually I think if people worked hard to try to make it work I think there are various things which could be introduced which could see it working for the medium term.”
For the full interview please click on the video above.
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