The British Plastics Federation’s recycling committee has backed a statement from environmental consultancy Eunomia that questions the official data from the Office for National Statistics on the increasing recycling rate.
In response to the report from the consultancy’s report ‘Plastic Packaging Shredding Light on the UK data’, Chairman of the British Plastics Federation Recycling Group, Roger Baynham said: ‘The British Plastics Federation Recycling Group supports the idea of an independent body being able to review the current data and develop clear proposals to tackle any identified errors. This would help ensure the system was transparent.’
The BPFRG is also pleased to hear the announcement that the Environment Audit Committee (EAC) has asked the National Audit Office (NAO) to assess the PRN scheme’s performance against its objectives and to consider whether there is a sufficiently robust approach to preventing fraud and non-compliance. To help reduce PRN fraud, the BPF recently launched a platform allowing the industry to anonymously report waste crime to the Environment Agency Intelligence Team.’
For several years, the BPFRG has raised concerns about the PRN system and called for reform. We have highlighted the fact that the current system encourages waste to be exported, as any contaminated material is still counted within recycling figures, whereas if recycled domestically, contaminated material must be removed prior to reporting. We welcome Eunomia’s suggestion that what qualifies as ‘recycled material’ should reconcile with the output from the final recycling process.’
Landfill - more recyclate may have been dumped than previously measured by data gathering agencies for England.