The UK’s approach to calculating packaging recycling rates is not sufficiently robust, and government appears not to have “faced up to underlying recycling issues”, says today’s (23 July) report by the National Audit Office (NAO).
Reducing waste and using resources more efficiently are long-standing objectives for the government, and tackling packaging waste is essential to achieving these ambitions.
The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) estimates that the UK has exceeded its overall packaging recycling target every year since 1997 and recycled 64% of packaging in 2017. However, the NAO has found that these figures do not account for the risk of undetected fraud and error.
A key government initiative to ensure that packaging is recycled – the packaging recycling obligation system – has subsidised waste exports to other parts of the world without adequate checks to ensure it is recycled.
Defra also has no evidence that the system has encouraged companies to minimise the use of packaging or make it easy to recycle, NAO says.
Amyas Morse, the head of the NAO – “The government should have a much better understanding of the difference this system makes and a better handle on the risks associated with so much packaging waste being recycled overseas.”
The packaging regulations create a complex market-based system to meet packaging recycling targets. They require companies that handle over 50 tonnes of packaging per year and have a turnover higher than £2m to demonstrate that they have recycled a certain amount of packaging by obtaining recovery evidence notes from accredited UK reprocessors and companies exporting waste for recycling abroad. In 2017, 7002 companies registered and paid a total of £73m towards the cost of recycling packaging.
Amyas Morse, the head of the NAO, said: “If the UK wants to play its part in fully tackling the impacts of waste and pollution, a tighter grip on packaging recycling is needed.
“Twenty years ago, the government set up a complex system to subsidise packaging recycling, which appears to have evolved into a comfortable way of meeting targets without addressing the fundamental issues.
“The government should have a much better understanding of the difference this system makes and a better handle on the risks associated with so much packaging waste being recycled overseas.”
Over-Claiming
The report identifies that the Environment Agency (EA), which is responsible for enforcing the system’s regulations in England, has fallen well short of its targets for inspections.
In 2016-17 the EA only carried out 40% of planned compliance visits to reprocessors and exporters to check they accurately report the amount of packaging recycled.
The risk that companies over-claim is potentially more acute for exporters than for UK-based recycling companies, with risks that some exported material is not recycled under equivalent standards to the UK and is instead sent to landfill or contributes to pollution, the NAO says. Yet exporters rated as high-risk were less likely to receive a compliance visit than those rated low-risk, the report finds.
David Palmer-Jones, CEO of SUEZ – “We need to move away from the current often box-ticking compliance approach notions of producer responsibility for what is made, to embracing the principles of a circular economy in the way we produce, consume, discard and reuse products and materials.”
The Agency has also identified a large number of companies that may have an obligation to pay into the system but have not registered. It does not have a good understanding of how significant the financial risk could be.
Defra has committed to reform the system as part of a new strategy for waste and resources. The NAO recommends that Defra should improve its approach to calculating packaging recycling rates. It should also do more to tackle the risks associated with waste being exported for recycling overseas.
“It is time to put an end to collection schemes where producers are often seen to ‘buy compliance’ and instead ensure producers take responsibility on behalf of their consumers and customers of what they produce, encouraging them to be part of the solution and not kept at not arm’s length through remote central bodies or compliance schemes.”
CIWM Says
CIWM’s cheif executive, Dr Colin Church, commented: “The issues tackled in the NAO report will not come as a surprise to the sector but this robust assessment reinforces the need for significant change.
“We know waste crime is on the rise and enforcement levels are often inadequate, we know there are material quality concerns that must be addressed, and we know that the UK needs to do more to reprocess its material here rather than relying so much on other countries, not least because of the fragility of those markets as China has amply demonstrated.
Dr Colin Church – “What we urgently need now in the forthcoming resource and waste strategy is a more robustly monitored system that incentivises smarter design to minimise packaging and increase recyclability and resource productivity…”
“What we urgently need now in the forthcoming resource and waste strategy is a more robustly monitored system that incentivises smarter design to minimise packaging and increase recyclability and resource productivity; that provides adequate funding for high quality collections of household packaging; and that supports the development of more domestic reprocessing capacity.
“Secondary materials will continue to move abroad to meet market demand but should do so as quality recyclate, not as poorly sorted waste. In parallel, the Government urgently needs to improve the market and material data to enable it assess – through the industrial strategy and related policies – how to realise more of the value of these materials for our own economy.”
Click here for the full report.
