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The Environment Agency is to take over the national packaging waste database from the end of 2006. It will also start issuing electronic packaging waste recovery notes (PRNs) and export recovery notes (PERNs) in the new year.

John Turner, chairman of the Advisory Committee on Packaging, says the £400,000 electronic system will be faster than the present one, and that the EA plans to stop publishing the PRN and PERN books on which it is based.

Use of the web-based system will be voluntary. “But I don’t know why anyone would want to continue with the manual system,” Turner said.

Lorraine Lockhart, director of Solution 7, the software house that developed the new system, said some 300 people, representing about 450 organisations, are using the system. She estimated 2,000 could be on the system by the end of 2007. But according to ACP’s Turner, about 11,000 companies are obligated to comply.