Draft Business Waste Strategy PDF - london.gov.uk - Greater ...

108 Mayor of London
Making waste work in London The Mayor’s Draft Business Waste Management Strategy
Busting the recyclable myth
5.19 Producers should consider available recycling infrastructure as part of the
design process. Clearly, a product is only recyclable if it can be dismantled
easily and inexpensively and if there are the facilities and technologies
available to recycle it, a factor that needs to be better taken into account
by producers. It is not enough to produce new compostable packaging,
for example, if composting facilities, equipped to handle compostable
packaging, do not exist locally or if it conflicts with local recycling
messages. Local authorities may not have the local infrastructure to
manage certain packaging materials, or packaging products may be
composed in such a way as to make them difficult to recycle or
uneconomic to collect, in terms of having a viable onward market.
5.20 Research on packaging from 29 everyday food items purchased from six
supermarkets, a local market and a local high street, found that around
five per cent of the weight of the goods was made up of packaging and
that 40 per cent of the packaging waste could not be recycled 237 . In this
situation these materials must be disposed of as waste, at cost to the tax
payer. Producers’ claims about how recyclable their products are must
reflect the local recycling infrastructure or producers need to work with
local authorities to develop collection and reprocessing facilities.
5.21 Good product information is a necessary condition for effective policies
to improve the environmental performance of products and there is
a strong case that effective labelling becomes a policy priority at EU
level 238 . The British Retail Consortium and WRAP are proposing a
consistent approach to recycling information labelling on consumer
packaging across the UK retail sector in order to help consumers recycle
more packaging 239 .
Case study 48 - Carton manufacturers take responsibility seriously
Each year, UK beverage carton manufacturers produce 55,000 tonnes of
paper-based cartons for milk, juice, sauces and other liquid food/drinks.
This equates to around two kilograms of cartons per household which
could be recycled instead of thrown in the rubbish bin. The Alliance for
Beverage Cartons and the Environment in the UK (ACE UK), has launched
a £1.2 million National Recycling Fund to help local authorities
dramatically boost beverage carton recycling in the UK. Agreed between
member companies the fund will substantially increase industry support to
local authorities and other organisations in order to help them establish
carton collection systems, either through their kerbside service or bring
bank network.