Wrap criticised for excess focus on packaging

In its business plan for 2008-11, published last week, the Waste & Resources Action Programme said it aimed to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill by 8 million tonnes by focusing on four key areas: packaging, the quality of recyclate, food waste and collection systems.

It also set targets to save five million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, and to realise £1.1bn of economic benefits.

However, Jane Bickerstaffe, director of the Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment (Incpen), said Wrap was still focusing too much on packaging.

She called on Wrap to do more to explain to the public “why packaging is so critical to the way we live”, and also said consumers should take more responsibility for their lifestyle choices.

Packaging Federation chief Dick Searle said Wrap’s role was to “cover the whole issue of waste as a resource” and packaging was only a “very small part”.

He said he would have liked the business plan to have contained “a lot more about food waste than about packaging”.

Wrap chief executive Liz Goodwin defended the continuing focus on packaging, saying it remained a “bug bear” for the public.

Goodwin said Wrap was talking to retailers to develop future targets for the Courtauld Commitment, the voluntary agreement to reduce packaging.

Wrap’s evaluation team was “very busy” measuring progress against the first Courtauld target, to design out growth in packaging waste by 2008, and results would be revealed at Wrap’s open meeting in September.

She also said Wrap was working with materials recovery facilities (MRFs) to improve the collection and recycling of glass containers, one of eight work streams outlined in the business plan.

Much of the UK’s used container glass is collected co-mingled and crushed into very small particles at MRFs, making it unsuitable for reuse in containers.

Goodwin said the public needed to “have confidence that materials are actually being recycled” and Wrap aimed to improve the quality of recovery.

Following the 30% cut in its funding from the Westminster government this year, Wrap will move away from mass advertising and will largely help retailers and local authorities communicate the benefits of recycling directly to the public.

Goodwin said the public needed to receive “very clear information” about recycling and she supported the British Retail Consortium’s common recycling logos, despite concerns that they could cause confusion due to the variety of recycling schemes operated by different local authorities.

She also said there needed to be more consistency in the types of materials collected. “People understand that there will need to be differences in the way things are collected but they should be able to expect some consistency in what is collected,” she added.

Goodwin also said Wrap had made a “conscious decision” to work more closely with the packaging industry and experts in other fields. “We don’t deliver on our own,” she said.

The Wrap business plan can be viewed at www.wrap.org.uk

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