PART 1
ITEM NO.
(OPEN TO THE PUBLIC)
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REPORT OF THE LEAD MEMBER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES
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TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL SCRUTINY COMMITTEE
ON 17TH DECEMBER 2001
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CONTACT OFFICER:
Wayne Priestley TEL NO: 793 2060
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TITLE: EUROPEAN AND UK INITIATIVES TO REDUCE AND RECYCLE
PACKAGING WASTE
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RECOMMENDATIONS:
 That members note the report
 That members consider writing to the Secretary of State for the
Environment regarding the feasibility of an hypothecated litter tax.
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
The report details how the UK and other European countries are addressing
the issue of reducing the amount of packaging waste being produced.
Emphasis is placed on the Green Dot scheme in Germany and the UK’s
Packaging Waste Directive. In addition to the recycling of packaging waste,
the report also considers the possibility of a hypothecated litter tax on
packaging, which regularly appears as street litter.
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BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS: (available for public inspection)
European Goes Green Dot – Duales System Deutschland AG (2001)
Annual Report 2000 Der Grüne Punkt – Duales System Deutschland AG
Waste Strategy 2000 for England and Wales - DETR
1.0
BACKGROUND
1.1
Environmental Scrutiny Committee requested that a report be prepared
on how other European countries were dealing with the issue of
recycling or reducing the amount of packaging waste, which often
contributes to the problem of street litter.
1.2
Information was promised to the committee on ‘Der Grüne Punkt’ or
‘The Green Dot System’ now operating in over 13 European Countries,
which has had a high degree of success in reducing the amount of
waste packaging being produced.
WARD(S) TO WHICH REPORT RELATE(S) N/A
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KEY COUNCIL POLICIES
Environmental Strategy
Recycling Policies
Waste Management
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2.0
DETAILS
2.1
At the end of the 1980’s the Federal Republic of Germany was facing a
serious crisis regarding the growing amount of waste it was producing
and the simultaneous lack of landfill capacity. In 1990, packaging
accounted for c. 30% by weight and 50% by volume of all household
waste. As a result in 1991 the Packaging Ordinance was passed. This
law’s aim was to prevent or reduce packaging waste. If this were not
possible, then such waste must either be re-used or recycled to ensure
materials were kept in the production loop as long as possible.
2.2
The main point of the Packaging Ordinance was that industry was
forced to accept responsibility for its products, in that it obliged
manufacturers, fillers and distributors of transport, secondary and sales
packaging to take back and recycle their used packaging. At the same
time the Ordinance also gave producers and retailers the chance to
transfer these obligations to private sector organisations to carry out
the work on their behalf so long as targets and responsibilities were
met.
2.3
In response to these new requirements a dual system for the collection
of packaging waste was established by the private sector. This
operates by issuing collection contracts to waste collection companies,
who collect packaging waste from those obligated, on the
understanding that the obligated companies paid a licence fee to place
a ‘Green Dot’ on their packaging to signify they were funding work
which led to their packaging being recycled. In this way the Green Dot
was, and still is, seen as a symbol of economic action involving
ecological responsibility and as such, can significantly boost the image
of the company.
2.4
To date over 19,000 companies have signed up to the Green Dot
scheme in Germany alone. In addition 13 other European and nonEuropean counties have also adopted the scheme with the result that
over 460 billion pieces of packaging marked with the Green Dot are
distributed worldwide.
2.5
Since the licence fees that have to be paid for the use of the Green Dot
are based on the type of packaging material, the weight and number of
items made, the Green Dot has given companies a great incentive to
optimise packaging. In order to lower their costs, companies are
increasingly cutting down on packaging material, changing the material
composition and using more environmentally friendly and recyclable
substances. Some examples are the total elimination of cardboard
boxes as secondary packaging and the reduction of the weight of cans
and glass containers. This has already made a tremendous
contribution towards the conservation of natural resources.
2.6
Reducing the amount of packaging used, has always been at the very
core of the dual system, which depends on the kerbside collections and
bring systems to collect its materials. For the view is that, recycling is
not enough in itself to stop the growing waste problem, waste reduction
is the ultimate aim.
2.7
The company, which organises this whole system, is a non-profit
making body known as Duales System Deutschland AG and it is
responsible for administering the waste collection contracts and the
issuing of licences to obligated companies. It also has a major role in
funding the ongoing development of sorting and processing
technologies for packaging recycling with the objective of reducing
costs of packaging but improving eco-efficiency. As a privately owned
institution it is trying to achieve a fair conciliation of interests in respect
of the demands of the environmental policy, the fee-paying industry,
the local authorities and the waste management and recycling firms.
Its goal is to make state interventions such as take-back and
deposit obligations unnecessary and to eliminate them for the
benefit of the fee-payer.
2.8
The success of the Green Dot scheme is that over 80% of all waste
packaging produced is subject to recycling, and with regards to waste
minimisation the amount of waste packaging produced, this has fallen
by 4% which although small, has to be measured against the fact had
action not been taken, waste packaging was expected to have risen in
amount by a further 20% by the present date. The avoidance effect in
Germany as a result of the Packaging Ordinance and the Green Dot
initiative is therefore probably up to 25% in real terms.
3.0
EUROPEAN LEGISLATION
3.1
Current EU minimum recycling rates for packaging waste need to be
doubled to achieve an optimum balance between economic costs and
environmental benefits, according to recent European Commission
thinking. The view is that current recycling targets for household and
industrial packaging should be increased form 25% and 45% currently,
to 50% and 68% by 2006.
3.2
To achieve these targets the following recycling rates would need to be
achieved for each material.
28 – 38% for plastics
60 – 70% for steel
25 – 31% for aluminium
47 – 65% for word
60 – 74% for paper and board
53 – 87% for glass
It is also proposed that separate collection systems would be needed
rather than trying to extract these materials from unsorted waste.
3.3
With regards to current packaging recycling rates in EU member
states, all but three have met the minimum 50% recovery target, these
being Spain, Italy and the UK.
4.0
THE UK’S RESPONSE
4.1
The UK in response to the EU Directive on Packaging and Packaging
Waste, aims to achieve the recycling of 50% of the 8 million tonnes of
packaging waste produced in the UK. It is estimated that the cost of
this, is likely to be 2p per £10 of every shopping bill. These targets are
part of the Packaging Waste Regulations, which came into force on the
6th March 1997.
4.2
In the UK, businesses are only affected if they fall into any three of the
following categories.
They are involved in:
 Manufacturing raw materials used for packaging
 Converting raw materials into packaging
 Packing or filling packaging
 Selling packaging or packaged products to the final user or
consumer
 They won and handle more than 50 tonnes of packaging materials
or packaging each year.
 They have an annual turnover of more than £2 million.
4.3
Each stage of the process will be responsible for a percentage of the
turnover.




Raw material manufacturers 6%
Converters 9%
Packers/fillers 37%
Sellers 48%
However each business is only responsible for the packaging waste
passed on the next company/person in the supply chain, e.g. a
distributor or wholesaler would be responsible for the cardboard boxes
delivered to the retailer, and the retailer would be responsible for the
shrink wrapping and paper or plastic carrier bag passed on the
consumer.
4.4
The monitoring of compliance with the regulations is achieved by
businesses being subject to registering and providing data as an
individual company, or through an approved compliance scheme,
which issues Packaging Recovery Notes, known as PRN’s. Each
business registering has to pay an annual registration fee of £950.
4.5
As with the Green Dot system in Germany and other European
countries, private sector organisations have established themselves to
provide collection schemes e.g. Valpak Ltd. Such organisations offer
assistance by helping businesses to understand the legislation,
calculate the amounts of packaging needing recycling, how to register,
establish regional and local forums for businesses to discuss recycling
etc.
4.6
One weakness of the scheme is that companies do not necessarily
need to recycle to comply with the regulations, but can simply buy
PRN’s from reprocessors. This is achievable by the fact some
companies who are ecologically-minded recycle more than they need
to, therefore this surplus still attracts PRN’s which are available to be
bought by non-recyclers which allows them to show they are complying
with their requirements.
4.7
However, as targets for recycling of packaging waste are increased,
the amount of surplus reduces and therefore there are fewer PRN’s
available to non-recyclers. This lack of PRN’s forces their value up and
as such it becomes expensive to keep buying PRN’s rather than
recycling your waste, for which PRN’s can be bought more cheaply as
well as gaining income from the materials your company has recycled.
Further to this there will come a time when targets are increased to
such a level where no PRN’s are available to non-recyclers, and as
such the non-recycler will be unable to prove they are meeting
requirements and therefore legal action can be taken against them by
the Environment Agency (although this scenario is still a long way off).
4.8
Although seemingly flawed, the income from the sale of PRN’s, which
is made by the reprocessor who accepts materials for recycling, has to
be reinvested into recycling systems, thereby providing greater
capacity to accept materials for recycling. In addition money raised
from the sale of compliance licences via organisations such a Valpak,
is also used to invest in new packaging technology to reduce or even
phase out certain types of packaging.
4.9
The UK has met its own expectations for the recycling of, and recovery
of packaging waste, and already with 27% recycling, meets the EU
Directive 25% target for minimum recycling. The material-specific
targets for each material (15% minimum in 2001) have also been met
with the exception of aluminium (13%) and plastic (8%). However as
highlighted at 3.1 and 3.2, targets are expected to be increased in the
coming years and this will mean significant improvements will need to
be made if new EU targets are to be met. Failure to meet such targets
will result on financial penalties being imposed on the UK Government.
4.10
A critical point not raised in this report so far, is that packaging targets
are not the sole responsibility of businesses, as around a half of all
packaging waste placed on the market ends up in the household waste
stream, particularly glass and aluminium. The collection of packaging
waste is therefore as much a responsibility of local authorities as it is
businesses. Recycling of such waste can only be achieved via the
introduction of kerbside collections and bring sites. Therefore there is
a need to develop a strong infrastructure of collection systems is
recycling targets are to be met, and in addition there will need to be the
development of sufficient markets for recycled materials.
Table 1
Estimated proportion of packaging materials arising in the household
and commercial/industrial waste streams
MATERIAL
HOUSEHOLD
COMMERCIAL/INDUSTRIAL
WASTE STREAM
WASTE STREAM
Aluminium
96%
4%
Steel
78%
22%
Plastic
71%
29%
Glass
84%
16%
Paper
13%
87%
5.0
IMPACT ON STREET LITTER
5.1
Initiatives on reducing packaging waste could have a significant effect
on some forms of street litter, most notably plastic wrappings, beverage
cans and paper. The desire to reduce secondary packaging could
mean many of the outer-casings on certain types of products may be
phased-put e.g. non-essential wrappers around foods and drinks.
However, litter will still continue to be found on the City’s streets in
some form or other, until the long-term educational drive to stop
littering bares fruit.
5.2
What perhaps needs to be considered is a similar scheme to the
Landfill Tax where a litter tax can be introduced on those products,
which produce the most evident street litter, such as fast foods,
cigarettes, chewing gum etc. This tax could be hypothecated as is the
Landfill Tax, to research better ways to produce goods that do not need
disposable elements, fund high profile litter campaigns, develop better
street cleansing technologies (especially in relation to chewing gum
removal) and finance studies into best practice elsewhere.
5.3
Which products to tax, could simply be identified by using existing data
from national litter surveys, or by carrying out a new nationwide survey
funded in advance, from monies raised by the new tax. Obviously such
a tax could be unpopular, as are all taxes, but it would probably be one
most welcomed by local authorities and the public alike.
6.0
CONCLUSION
6.1
This report has intended to show how pan-European attempts are
being made to reduce the amount of waste packaging in circulation.
These attempts affect all sectors of society from large scale packaging
manufacturers and users, to every home across Europe. Significant
strides are being made by the business sector but a major role must be
made by the consumer, either through recycling, refusing to buy, or
returning unnecessary packaging.
6.2
In relation to litter, although reducing the amount of packaging waste
will help to reduce the ability to drop litter, litter still needs to be
attacked both through product design, education and enforcement.
6.3
It is hoped that the contents of this report have given some hope for the
future with regards to creating a more sustainable and cleaner
environment in which we must all live and work.
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