International Review of Waste Management Policy - Department of ...

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Companies that supply packaging or packaged goods to customers in other
member states, particularly in the UK or France, may receive requests for
information from these customers.”
Where packaged goods are found not to be in compliance, the goods could be
removed from the market and the Local Authority can make a prosecution.
Repak highlights that although EU countries including Ireland have transposed the
Directive, of these countries, only France and the UK have specified a procedure
which companies must follow to demonstrate compliance. 223
12.5.3 Producer Responsibility - Participation via Repak Compliance
Scheme
Repak is the only approved Compliance Scheme in relation to packaging in Ireland.
Members, through membership, effectively pass on responsibility to Repak for the
recycling and recovery of the packaging waste they are required to meet, with
participating companies paying a fee for membership, based on their membership
type. Repak estimates that in 2006, 57% of the waste packaging tonnage came
within the remit of the compliance Scheme, with 43% being outside as Self Compliers.
Repak’s members are of two types: 224
� Regular members (854 members) are those companies that are importers or
brand holders, and have primary packaging responsibility. They are required to
submit statistics biannually and pay an average fee of € 12,500; and
� Scheduled members (1,327 members) are smaller operators, who are not
involved in the branding or importation of products. They are not required to
submit statistics to calculate the fee element required annually, and instead
pay an annual flat fee, based on their turnover. These include small retailers,
off licences, hotels, pubs, clubs and restaurants.
The membership is split, so that 39% of the membership is made up of Regular
members (involved in direct importation or branding), and this set within the
membership makes up 95% of the income generated from membership fees. For the
regular members, the fee is split within the 5 categories of producer/manufacturer,
converter, brand holder/importer, distributor/wholesaler and retailer.
223 The approach taken in the UK is not especially ‘hard line’. For a discussion, see Eunomia, The
Environment Council, Oko Institut, TNO and Atlantic Consulting (2007) Household Waste Prevention:
Policy Side Research Programme, Final Report for Defra, April 2007. It can also be argued that the
different ways in which the requirements of the Packaging Directive are implemented do, themselves,
have an impact on the extent to which producers are likely to minimise packaging. Other things being
equal, the greater the proportion of the cost of compliance borne by the producers (as opposed to local
authorities and the generality of households), the stronger will be the incentive to minimise packaging.
In this respect, the UK approach has to be considered alongside the very low proportion of compliance
costs borne by producers, which offers somewhat limited (though non-zero) incentives for compliance
(see also Annex 13.0).
224 International Review of Waste Management Policy - Presentation to TOBIN Consulting Engineers.
International Review of Waste Policy: Annexes