Josh Brooks: If the ACP wants to improve packaging then it must seek input from those who make it

A press release landed on my desk this month announcing the new make-up of Defra’s Advisory Committee on Packaging. The committee had, it said, been tasked with delivering the goals of last summer’s Packaging Strategy.

So what are those four goals? First, the new ACP must ensure the functioning of the producer responsibility regulations for packaging waste. Next, it will promote packaging optimisation including embedding eco-design and promoting greater use of recycled materials.

Third, it will incorporate carbon and life-cycle analysis considerations into the producer responsibility system. Finally, it will maximise the environmental benefits of recycling packaging waste.

If the ACP’s remit was confined to points one, three and four, then it would probably fit the bill. After all, it includes two representatives from compliance schemes, two representatives from raw materials manufacturers or reprocessors, and new posts for a local authority waste expert and a consumer representative. There is clearly expertise in both the waste stream and the waste regulations built into this committee.

But consider point two and holes appear in the committee’s structure. There is talk of eco-design, yet no position for a packaging designer. And only cursory industry knowledge tells us that retailers call the shots in packaging specification; yet there is only one place for a retailer. That’s not enough.

Worse, there is just one converter. However good the person is who fills that role, many sectors of packaging manufacturing risk going unrepresented. This committee illustrates that perfectly: no one on the committee is involved in making corrugated, cartonboard, glass or rigid plastics packaging.

None of this is a comment on the very able people who have been elected. But the structure is wrong. If Defra wants to improve packaging’s perfor-mance, it must seek the views of the people who make it.

Josh Brooks is editor of Packaging News

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