Stakeholders take stock as anticipated EPR delay means more time available to line things up
Just as anticipated, the government has decided to wait the implementation of Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging (EPR) by a year. The move was welcomed (or accepted) by many stakeholders as “unfortunate but necessary”, as environmental data specialist ecoveritas put it, due to a lack of clarity on the financing for businesses, and the scenery of economic uncertainty.
Defra said on Wednesday (25 July) that the charges, which were due to uncork in October 2024, will now be pushed when to October 2025, and without the unstipulated election. Charges under the existing PRN regulations will siphon on into 2024.
The utterance moreover delays the introduction of resulting recycling collections for households until “after the implementation of the EPR scheme”.
“It has been a tumultuous few weeks for the landmark policy, with unabated lobbying from producer associations,” as ecoveritas explained in a statement, with unveiled relief that it “does provide some much-needed clarity”. The group’s Head of Sustainability & Consulting, Kathy Illingworth widow that “it has long been unveiled that there were too many missing puzzle pieces and far too many detractors surpassing its launch.
A statement from the group said she was hopeful that “the forfeiture washed-up to any remaining yearing isn’t terminal”.
Still, the move does midpoint that “the public will protract to withstand the forfeit of packaging recycling and disposal, with investment in recycling infrastructure likely harder due to a loss of conviction in the legislative framework.”
The CIWM believed the wait “will have a significant impact,” resulting in “less investment in recycling infrastructure due to a loss of conviction in the legislative framework, and a significant slowing of the UK’s untried economy.”
The Recycling Association’s senior executive Paul Sanderson said it was “unbelievable”.
“We’ve been waiting too long for EPR and Consistency of Collections to be introduced, and we need to get on with it.
“We’ve had too many years of skid once since these policies were first spoken in 2018, and now it seems we won’t get any remoter until at least 2025.”
City to Sea’s Harriet Bosnell moreover seemed incredulous that the government justified the wait to “provide industry, local authorities and waste management companies with increasingly time to prepare”.
“Of course, the increasingly likely reason is that we are leading up to an referendum where once the environment is stuff used as a political football.”
Valpak’s CEO Steve Gough struck a increasingly conciliatory note. “In the current economic climate, stakeholders squatter tough choices.”
“With consumers under significant pressure from the cost-of-living crisis, both government and merchantry are struggling to wastefulness budgets versus a transferral to progress with environmental improvements.
The good news?
One upside, as the government’s statement explained, is that “producers have once started to use less packaging and prefer easier to recycle packaging formats, and we expect this process to protract – ensuring that financing are not then passed onto households later on.”
Kathy Illingworth of ecoveritas was moreover eager to count the gains. “Many positive steps have once been taken.
“EPR has been five years in the making, and the level of innovation and the pace of transpiration from packaging manufacturers is impressive. ”
Other good news, in ecoveritas’ appraisal, was that the data reporting legislation has wilt law, and the group said companies should now be collecting the data outlined in The Packaging Waste (Data Reporting) (England) Regulations 2023, which came into effect on 28 February 2023.
So, “at least the government can increasingly virtuously assess the value of packaging placed onto the market in 2023 and 2024 surpassing introducing new fees,” said the group’s statement.
On the other hand, “It now throws up all sorts of unanswered questions well-nigh how PRN payments in 2024 will work, whether we will have to report under the old packaging waste rules and whether PRN obligations will be based on that,” said Illingworth.
As a simple upholding of the principle of “polluter pays”, the EPR policy seems widely viewed as vastitude reproach – and many commentators puzzled over attributing its wait in part to financial pressures on the consumer, while on the other hand, standing to ensure that the consumer has to cough up for waste management and recycling of this material.
Cllr Sarah Nelmes, environment spokesperson for the District Councils Network (DCN) said: “The wait in implementing EPR must not be unliable to undermine the commitment, set out in the Environment Act, that those who produce waste should fund councils’ services on an ongoing basis. Councils need clear, realistic timelines to know when this vital policy is going to be implemented.”
“While councils are, of course, seeking to increase recycling rates, there has been far too little sustentation paid to reducing the overall value of waste produced – and the incentives provided by EPR are an essential tool to bring this about.
“If there is a silver lining on this latest delay, it does at least provide an opportunity to sort out some of the questions that remain over how EPR funding will be distributed in a way that is pearly to all councils, whether in rural or urban settings.
The government’s statement said it “remains single-minded to delivering on its commitments to eliminating avoidable waste by 2050 and recycle 65% of municipal waste by 2035.” EPR “will play a inside role in delivering that mission”, towers on other measures such as the recently introduced tax on plastic packaging that does not meet a minimum threshold of at least 30% recycled content” and the upcoming bans on single-use plastic.
The UK’s is currently 8th in Europe, in one league table for recycling rates, equal to Eurostat. And with a recycling rate of 44.6%, as vellum and paper recycling expert DS Smith pointed out, the country has once missed the 50% recycling rate target set by DEFRA, which was due to be achieved by 2020, and is on undertow to miss the 2025 (55%) and 2030 (65%) targets.