Who’s responsible for packaging waste?

Rather than a prob­lem halved, a prob­lem shared may become some­thing no one wants to own. Everybody’s prob­lem becomes nobody’s and, being nobody’s prob­lem, it tends not to get solved. Pack­ag­ing waste is in dan­ger of going down this worm­hole of blind spots and buck-pass­ing. So whose respon­si­bil­i­ty is it?

Accord­ing to Jacob Hayler, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Envi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices Asso­ci­a­tion (ESA), all play­ers in the pack­ag­ing sup­ply chain have impor­tant roles to play. “Gov­ern­ment needs to set a stronger sys­tem of pro­duc­er respon­si­bil­i­ty for pack­ag­ing which boosts recy­cling,” he says. “Retail­ers need to use their influ­ence over sup­pli­ers to encour­age pack­ag­ing to be more recy­clable and over con­sumers to make green­er choic­es.

“Pack­ag­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers need to think inno­v­a­tive­ly about recy­cla­bil­i­ty, while retain­ing packaging’s vital func­tion­al­i­ty and role in pro­tect­ing goods.”

Mean­while, fig­ures for pack­ag­ing waste con­tin­ue to make head­lines, for the wrong rea­sons. The 2016 RECOUP sur­vey revealed an aver­age UK house­hold uses near­ly 500 plas­tic bot­tles a year, but only recy­cles just over half of them. This means some 5.5 bil­lion plas­tic bot­tles went uncol­lect­ed in 2015, more than 15 mil­lion every day.

When it comes to house­hold recy­cling, in gen­er­al, the licence allowed local coun­cils in Eng­land to cre­ate their own pol­i­cy leads to mar­ket frag­men­ta­tion. Accord­ing to Chris Water­house, chair­man of the Pack­ag­ing Soci­ety and man­ag­ing direc­tor of con­sul­tan­cy iDi Pac, the onus is on West­min­ster to change the game.

“Gov­ern­ment needs to engage with indus­try, local gov­ern­ment, recy­cling and waste to con­struct a con­sis­tent and coher­ent approach,” he says. “A stan­dard­ised approach will allow invest­ment in the appro­pri­ate infra­struc­ture.”

Legislation

Pol­i­cy-mak­ing is prov­ing prob­lem­at­ic, how­ev­er. The nation­al Lit­ter Strat­e­gy for Eng­land, launched with the aim of reduc­ing the £800-mil­lion annu­al bur­den on the tax­pay­er, dis­ap­point­ed many with its lack of ambi­tion.

At the same time, north of the bor­der, recent Scot­tish plans for a deposit return scheme to incen­tivise con­sumer recy­cling of bot­tles and cans, though com­par­a­tive­ly brave, are also deeply unpop­u­lar with­in the pack­ag­ing indus­try.

More­over, it is not just a mat­ter of what gets recy­cled and how much, but where it goes and gets used, says Mr Hayler. “Cur­rent leg­is­la­tion, in the form of pack­ag­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty oblig­a­tions, has done a great job in rais­ing recy­cling rates at very low cost,” he says. “But there are no real dri­vers to encour­age UK man­u­fac­tur­ers to use recy­cled mate­ri­als.

“This means much of the recy­cling we col­lect ends up being export­ed over­seas. If we want a strong and sta­ble long-term recy­cling mar­ket in the UK, then actions to encour­age greater domes­tic use of mate­ri­als will be crit­i­cal. Intro­duc­tion of dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed fees under this sys­tem would help con­sid­er­ably.”

Dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed fees would see pack­ag­ing which is recy­clable or uses high lev­els of recy­cled con­tent attract­ing low­er reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance costs. The ESA also high­lights government’s role in stim­u­lat­ing mar­ket demand through pro­cure­ment, direct­ly spec­i­fy­ing high­er lev­els of recy­cled con­tent and demand­ing its sup­pli­ers do the same.

Promoting collaboration

“One of the rea­sons gov­ern­ment lead­er­ship is impor­tant,” says Trewin Restorick, founder and chief exec­u­tive of envi­ron­men­tal char­i­ty Hub­bub, “is that it forces col­lab­o­ra­tion between all parts of the sup­ply chain from man­u­fac­tur­ers through to the waste indus­try.”

The pow­er of col­lab­o­ra­tion has been amply demon­strat­ed this year by Hub­bub with its Square Mile Chal­lenge, suc­cess­ful­ly recy­cling 1.2 mil­lion cof­fee cups from the heart of Lon­don.

Bring­ing togeth­er major retail brands, includ­ing Cos­ta, Marks and Spencer, McDonald’s and Star­bucks, plus the City of Lon­don and Net­work Rail, the scheme cre­at­ed 117 places for recy­cling. Giv­en that the UK had been throw­ing away sev­en mil­lion cof­fee cups a day, with less than 1 per cent recy­cled, the ben­e­fits of shared endeav­our are easy to see and count.

A col­lec­tive shift in our approach to used pack­ag­ing calls for more of a cir­cu­lar-econ­o­my mind­set, one that tru­ly starts see­ing waste as a resource

Col­lab­o­ra­tion has also been key for Keep Britain Tidy in pur­su­ing solu­tions with the pack­ag­ing indus­try to design out prob­lem ele­ments, says chief exec­u­tive Alli­son Ogden-New­ton. “Keep Britain Tidy led on pack­ag­ing inno­va­tion that removed ring pulls from cans and poly­styrene from burg­er box­es. That kind of ‘think­ing out­side the burg­er box’ is need­ed across the entire indus­try if we are to turn the tide on lit­ter and waste.”

Look­ing dif­fer­ent­ly at pack­ag­ing waste by actu­al­ly tak­ing a pho­to of it can bring new mean­ing to the process of pick­ing up rub­bish, thanks to a free smart­phone app called Lit­terati.

The app enables users to iden­ti­fy, col­lect and geo­t­ag the world’s lit­ter. It har­ness­es the pow­er of crowd­sourced data to map inci­dences of pol­lu­tion world­wide, with key­words iden­ti­fy­ing com­mon­ly found brands and prod­ucts, from fast food to cig­a­rettes. This data is then used to work with com­pa­nies and organ­i­sa­tions to find more sus­tain­able solu­tions.

Such smart use of mobile and dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy helps boost cit­i­zen engage­ment. It also pro­motes pro­duc­er account­abil­i­ty, which is key, says Lit­terati founder and chief exec­u­tive Jeff Kirschn­er. “The nee­dle moves when con­sumers demand change, either with their wal­let or their words,” he says. “How­ev­er, as the source, brands wield enor­mous influ­ence.”

Pho­to­graph­ic evi­dence sup­ports proof of lia­bil­i­ty and allo­ca­tion of respon­si­bil­i­ty. San Fran­cis­co even used Litterati’s data to cre­ate a tax on cig­a­rette sales, which helps gen­er­ate near­ly $4 mil­lion a year towards clean­ing up.

For Mr Kirschn­er, though, it is not puni­tive dis­in­cen­tives, but poten­tial pos­i­tives that will ulti­mate­ly dri­ve change. “Sticks are short sight­ed. I’m all about car­rots. Brands have a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to trans­form an envi­ron­men­tal haz­ard into an eco­nom­ic engine and become an indus­try hero,” he says.

Such a col­lec­tive shift in our approach to used pack­ag­ing calls for more of a cir­cu­lar-econ­o­my mind­set, one that tru­ly starts see­ing waste as a resource. This is not just about improv­ing pol­i­cy or trans­form­ing tech­nol­o­gy – it’s time to upcy­cle our think­ing, too.