Local authorities and industry fight over UK recycling bill

Date: 22/04/04

A BITTER battle has broken out in the UK regarding the recycling of packaging.

While local authorities believe that industry should pay for the necessary upgrade of facilities to meet a tough new European Union recycling target, packaging companies think the government should foot the bill.

The dispute comes after the European Parliament confirmed that the minimum recycling target for packaging waste would be raised from 25% to 55% by 2008, to drastically reduce the amount of discarded packaging that pollutes the environment.

These new targets will make it obligatory for manufacturers and packaging companies to recycle materials discarded by households, instead of relying solely on waste from industrial and commercial premises.

But local authorities in the UK have expressed dismay at meeting the new targets, claiming that they are reluctant to collect used packaging on industry's behalf, unless they receive extra payments. They argue that taxpayers should not have to make up the shortfall in costs.

Some sectors of the packaging industry, however, are worried that the extra costs incurred will eat into already tight margins.

Producers of glass and aluminium products are especially concerned that the EU law will put them under extreme financial pressure unless they receive state aid.

Incpen, the UK-based Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment, which spawned the Brussels-based packaging industry body Europen a decade ago, has also expressed concerns that the latest set of recycling targets are too demanding.

The association insists that it is inappropriate for rural areas, which would use extra energy to collect materials for recycling, to have the same targets as cities.

"Packaging manufacturers and users are already responsible for ensuring that packaging is safe in use and that it can be treated and handled safely in any efficient waste management system at the end of its useful life," the association said in a statement.

"Unlike larger items, such as cars and white goods, there is very little used packaging that can be reused and it has a low scrap value.

"Imposing further responsibility on industry for taking back used packaging has little or no effect on choice and design of packaging."

But Melissa Shinn, ecological product policy officer for the Brussels-based European Environmental Bureau (EEB), an umbrella group for thousands of green NGOs across Europe, claimed that "industry should be paying for this".

The trouble is, she suggested, the PRN, or "packaging waste recovery note", system in the UK, which differs from most other member states, apart from soon-to-be member Poland, which has been experimenting with a similar system.

"Recycling is a mess in Poland, it is real chaos," Shinn said.

"Industry is paying for this in other member states, just not in the UK because of the PRN system," she added.

But Jane Bickerstaffe, director of Incpen, which was established in 1974 as a research body to look at the social and environmental impact of packaging, said that the idea behind PRN "to try and generate additional funds" was a good one.

Essentially, the PRN concept involves "setting targets for lighter or heavier materials", but it is "terribly complicated", as it involves a "complicated split through all the different parts of the supply chain".

"It's almost like a black market - it is currency," she said. "And nobody's quite sure where it all goes, either."

Local authorities, however, have found themselves as the "piggy in the middle" of the ongoing dispute in the UK, she added.

"It has been easier for them to recycle heavy stuff first, such as garden and kitchen waste, as well as glass and paper," Bickerstaffe explained.

"So the new packaging target is an additional burden."

Ironically, advancements in packaging - such as plastic yoghurt cups, which weighed 12 grammes on average in 1960 but weigh a mere four grammes today - make it more difficult for local authorities to collect such lighter materials, Bickerstaffe said.

Therefore, the industry is often too little rewarded for advancements in reducing waste at the start as opposed to the endpoint.

"The [Union's packaging waste] law is pushing us towards the things that are more easy to recycle," she said.

"They don't give us any credit for the fact that we use less material today in the first place."

Incpen and other opponents of the new EU recycling targets point out that the recycling of such lightweight packaging materials as plastic and aluminium will make only a minor contribution to helping local authorities meet their own recycling targets.

This is because such targets are weight-based.

There are fears that local authorities will meet their targets simply through the recycling of paper and organic waste alone.

The ongoing dispute over producer responsibility will make it harder for the UK to meet the EU 2008 targets.

According to the Association of European Producers of Steel Packaging (APEAL) figures, just 42% of steel packaging in the UK was recycled in 2002, well below the European average of 60%.

Belgium (with 93%), Germany (79%) and the Netherlands (78%) topped the tables.

According to environment pressure group Friends of the Earth, the UK recycles less steel than Australia (43%), Korea (47%), the US (59%), South Africa (63%) and Japan (86%).

But some member states have even worse recycling records - Finland has a rate of just 39% when it comes to steel. Portugal, at 28%, remains at the 2001 level, but has already exceeded the minimum recycling rate of 15% that it is obliged to reach under EU law by the end of 2005.

Still, APEAL contends that Europe stands out favourably in an international context - only Japan and South Africa exceed the European average in terms of steel recycling.

At the same time, the British government's handling of EU directives on end-of-life vehicles (ELV) and waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) lacks clarity, according to a House of Commons parliamentary report released in February.

Environment agency resources and environment ministry skills may be inadequate to deal with the laws' requirements, the report stated.

The MPs' warning echoes criticisms levelled by the government's official "better regulation taskforce" (BRTF) last July.

As well as urging the government to issue "clear guidance" to the recycling industry, the report recommends reviewing funding arrangements for ELV implementation and including printer cartridges under WEEE rules.

The BRTF report recommends publishing a timetable that provides deadlines for key decisions, such as the role of retailers in taking back WEEE on visible fees.

This would better enable industry to plan, the group said.

The government should also provide details on how other EU countries are faring in their implementation of the two directives, it suggested.

A dispute over recycling has broken out in the UK where local authorities think that industry should pay for the upgrade of facilities to meet European Union recycling targets, while packaging companies think the Government should pay.