Industry voices are too dominant on the government’s new administrator, PackUK’s steering group, says North London Waste Authority (NLWA).
While NLWA greatly welcomes the establishment of PackUK and its purpose to “help businesses reduce packaging usage and promote more sustainable alternatives”, NLWA expressed concern that the imbalance in representation may hamper the very purpose of extended producer responsibility for packaging (pEPR).
NLWA pointed to the lack of representation of local government via waste disposal and collection authorities on the steering group, organisations which have the relevant and direct experience of dealing with the complexities of everyday waste.
Cllr Clyde Loakes, NLWA’s chair, called for PackUK to consider that local authorities and producers are equally important for the successful delivery of pEPR.
“The representation by those organisations which manage the waste must be equivalent to businesses which generate the waste. Previous attempts to address unsustainable packaging have marginalised local government representation to those attempts detriment and now we see that representation minimised again, which is unacceptable during a climate emergency.
“Furthermore, if the government is serious about transitioning to a circular economy, where business designs out waste and they reuse resources, the government needs to ensure that business is incentivised to innovate. Extended producer responsibility must encourage the research of alternative, sustainable materials that replace or dramatically reduce plastics use. It is not just about recycling,” Cllr Loakes said.
NLWA also urged the government to ensure that current plastic tax mechanisms are robust enough to ensure recycled content continues to be incentivised in packaging.
“Since 2022, all eligible businesses have had to pay a tax on plastic packaging that has less than 30% recycled plastic content. It’s led to an increase in recycled content in the product packaging of products on sale in the UK.
“However, with the announcement by Donald Trump that the US is withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement and that his administration will encourage a dramatic increase in drilling for crude oil, the production of plastics from virgin oil may become much cheaper. It may cause businesses to prefer to pay a tax rather than incorporate recycled content in their packaging
“Therefore, the government must ensure that the use of recycled content continues to be encouraged and prioritised whatever happens with the price of oil – this could be done by potentially indexing the tax to virgin plastic prices as well as CPI, the current mechanism," Cllr Loakes said.
