The scheme's parent company, the Wastelink Group, said today that its regulator the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has now audited its activities in the last compliance year.
”The sudden large increase in the material specific targets, combined with the increase in the overall target, was always likely to cause problems in the 2004 compliance market.“
– Peter Gaffney, Wastepack
Wastepack said it is “confident that this will have confirmed that the PRNs and PERNs it presented have ensured compliance with its obligations under the packaging waste regulations”.
Peter Gaffney, director of compliance for the Wastelink Group, said: “We are pleased to have achieved compliance in a difficult year for the industry. The sudden large increase in the material specific targets, combined with the increase in the overall target, was always likely to cause problems in the 2004 compliance market.”
Under the packaging regulations, companies in the packaging chain that are above the threshold size are responsible for recovering and recycling their share of UK packaging waste. They can do this by purchasing sufficient packaging waste recovery notes (PRNs) from accredited reprocessors – or from exporters in the form of export notes, PERNs – which are issued for the tonnage of packaging waste that is recovered or recycled.
Companies are free to comply with the regulations individually, or they can join compliance schemes like Wastepack, which purchase sufficient PRNs on their behalf.
Difficult
Last year was seen as one of the most difficult since the packaging regulations came into force, in the wake of fraud allegations in the plastics reprocessing sector and challenging national recovery and recycling targets for packaging producers.
Mr Gaffney said Wastepack had found the PRN market difficult in 2004 with much higher material specific recycling targets set by the government than in previous years.
He said: “Existing contracts had tied up substantial quantities of PRNs that could have previously been used to meet general recycling obligations but were now required to meet the material specific obligations of all producers.
”Deregistration of plastics reprocessors resulted in extra pressure on supply and cost. “
– Peter Gaffney, Wastepack
“Another factor was that deregistration of plastics reprocessors resulted in extra pressure on supply and cost,” he added.
Planning
Good forward planning and “our excellent relationships with reprocessors” had been key to the compliance scheme achieving compliance in 2004, Mr Gaffney explained.
While Wastepack is the largest compliance scheme under the Wastelink Group umbrella, the company's smaller schemes have not yet been audited.
Wastepack said it is still awaiting the end of year audit of its smaller schemes, which are registered with the Environment Agency and the Northern Ireland Environment and Heritage Service, but it anticipates a positive outcome to these audits.
Reasonable steps
It is thought that some compliance schemes and individually-registered obligated packaging producers may not have been able to obtain all the PRNs or PERNs they needed for 2004.
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The Environment Agency is having meetings with SEPA to discuss whether the regulatory bodies will accept pleas of “reasonable steps” by failing obligated parties, and where the level of acceptance will fall.
Back in the 2001 year, Wastepack itself faced some difficulties in obtaining sufficient PRNs to meet its obligation, ultimately complying by alternate means that were then acceptable to its regulator, SEPA (see letsrecycle.com story). Packaging compliance through alternative means than the PRN system was limited by amendments to the regulations in 2003.
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