It seems the last quarter has been a lot about single use – but with 8 meetings attended recently by me– no danger of the LARAC Chair being single use – a heads up for Carole!
Included: Waste Network Chairs (twice), ACP (twice), WRAP, Voluntary and Economic Incentives Working Group (twice), Consistency Advisory Group and Industry Round Table.
There have been two Waste Network Chairs meetings, the first with DEFRA (in October) looked at the implications of the EU Circular Economy Package for the UK and the ways of achieving higher recycling rates across all sectors. It included very incisive discussion on all the related areas such as pay as you throw, extended producer responsibility, design for recycling and so on. The second, just before Christmas, took place without DEFRA and gave the chance for us to have some good discussion around consolidating messages to government across the sector. This might be a good way to get messages recognised by a government that is moving the environment up its agenda. Areas this could cover would be on recyclability of products, transparency of PRNS, householder recycling communications. Among other things we also looked at the 2030 packaging targets and DRS, referring to Valpak’s Packflow Report. An interesting point which came out was that in other countries, where national communications didn’t happen, recycling rates plateaued or reduced. Ways to create a communications fund here in the UK were discussed – DRS, pay as you throw, etc. This work is to continue and will be reported back to DEFRA.
My meetings at the ACP – the Advisory committee on Packaging: the work done here supports the devolved administrations as well as UK as a whole have been looking at packaging design in relation to litter and we will be meeting with DEFRA, with WRAP, in relation to this. We also discussed consumer communication and behaviour and concluded that a sustainable funding system needs to be adopted. There will need to targeted communications programmes over long periods to drive behaviour change to boost recycling performance. (You can probably see a theme emerging!). We also had a presentation from Liz Laurence from DEFRA – who addressed the LARAC meeting in January as part of their plan to engage with stakeholders – about Defra’s plans for the Waste and Resources Strategy which will focus on two key areas, a) maximise the value we get from resources and b) minimise the impacts associated with disposable at end of life. DRS featured high in Wales and Scotland too with feasibility schemes in Wales and trails in Scotland both coming up. It’s good to remember DRS is coming to our country when a highly developed kerbside service is already in place – on the continent it largely predated comprehensive kerbside. My work with the Voluntary and Economic Incentives Working Group centred around drinks containers, and the work done there comes up with the same problematical conundrum – it’s difficult to know what might be the effect, in the UK, of introducing DRS, because of our well-established kerbside collection schemes for recycling.
Meetings with WRAP took in the China situation and WRAP’s work with their 70 pilot authorities making the business case for greater consistency, there is a report in the members’ area on this meeting, provided by Lee.
Well, that’s my last quarter, I’ve greatly enjoyed being the Chair of LARAC and I would like to thank the LARAC Exec for their support and hard work over the four years I have been in post, the time has gone very quickly, and I have been involved in some fascinating work, supporting our members and their views
