Robbie Staniforth, policy manager at Ecosurety, says when it comes to plastics, rather than having a blanket levy that affects the whole UK population, Ecosurety believes the solution lies at consumer level.
This week the Parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) announced its plan to scrutinise the Government’s long-awaited 25-year plan for the environment. Having gone on the record about how disappointed we were with the plan’s lack of detail, it’s heartening to see the committee asking the waste and recycling industry to feed into something we very much feel needs further scrutiny.
There are some exciting ideas in the plan that we believe will gain credence over time, namely the adoption of natural capital, that is the attempt to place a monetary value on the UK’s natural resources, to demonstrate the consequences of using them up.
But when it came to the recycling of waste, the plan felt very vague. In between, the public has zeroed in on the problem of plastics pollution in the world’s oceans and rivers. This is a matter of grave concern, as anybody watching Sky News’ recent Dirty Business documentary would agree.
However, the chorus of voices to simply ban or tax single-use plastic does not factor in what an extremely useful material it is in our lives. Everything from our food to our clothes contain or use plastic in their supply chains. Unfortunately, the system is breaking down between the money producers already pay to get as a consequence of selling plastic packaging, and those plastic items that end up in our oceans.
It’s not the creation of plastic that is the problem, it’s its disposal, as demonstrated by the need to export over two thirds of used plastic packaging each year.
The UK needs better plastics reprocessing infrastructure so that we recycle as much as we possibly can and stop it being sent to the Far East.
But this does not mean that the UK must magically create onshore end-markets for recycled plastic. A circular economy means more than merely the localism of recycling what’s on our doorstep.
Recycled plastic has a value and it is perfectly possible to reprocess the plastic in the UK and then export high quality material, rather than the contaminated bales China are so reluctant to continue accepting. If we cannot create a local market, we can send high quality recycled plastic pellet or flake abroad to be turned into new products, which would vastly reduce the chances of plastics ending up in our oceans.
If we simply decide to impose a separate plastics levy for manufacturers and producers it will inevitably lead to higher prices for the consumer or a move to other materials, which may not be a resource efficient.
We are already seeing signs of change among packaging manufacturers, and retailers are also trying to ‘deplasticise’ because they understand, if you will excuse the pun, that the tide of public opinion is turning. It should not be beyond us as a country to reprocess our plastic packaging, especially since it accounts for so little of our overall waste in terms of volume.
One area in which we could immediately cut down on mixed plastics is simply incentivising manufacturers to use mono-materials in, for example, disposable food wrapping. The explosion in long working hours and commuting has resulted in the UK’s subsequent ‘eat on the go’ culture.
There are regulations in place to support the creation of packaging, but it needs to be more descriptive and prescriptive to ensure the materials that go into a sandwich box mean they can all be recycled. Put simply, the Packaging Essential Requirements Regulations that sit alongside the law that created the PRN (Packaging Waste Recovery Note) system, do not ‘require’ enough.
Food manufacturers aren’t trying to deliberately create more plastic, they are simply answering a consumer need for convenient food or goods. They already pay through their recycling obligation money to offset the creation of this packaging, which is then passed onto the consumer in the purchase price.
If we simply decide to impose a separate plastics levy for manufacturers and producers it will inevitably lead to higher prices for the consumer or a move to other materials, which may not be a resource efficient.
Rather than having a blanket levy that affects the whole UK population, we believe the solution lies at consumer level. It should be cheaper for a consumer to buy their goods wrapped in mono-materials. It will be easier to recycle, and easier to process – and is far less likely to end up in the world’s oceans and rivers because it will be a premium recycling commodity.
We advocate more responsibility at all levels from manufacturing to consumer, which we believe can be achieved through greater market incentivisation and not direct taxes. This will lead to better quality material for the recyclers to make their investment plans around.
The UK needs to see where its plastic waste ends up, and that requires a mixture of investment and a hard-headed look at the quality of plastic we currently collect from households and street collections.
It’s by no means a quick fix, but then neither, sadly, is a tax.
