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Improving the UK’s "disgraceful" waste collection infrastructure is a much more pressing issue than "excess" packaging, according to Packaging Federation chief executive Dick Searle

“There’s more packaging per head in France and Germany than there is here, but it’s not an issue, because they have recycling systems that work,” he said during his Packaging Innovation seminar yesterday.

“In the UK, there’s a huge difference between what is required and what is actually possible, because of the disgraceful waste infrastructure here.”

With the government poised to publish its waste strategy, Searle said the failure to harness energy from waste to date was a “scandalous” missed opportunity, but underlined the fact that the effect of packaging is less than is generally believed.

“Avoidable food waste has eight times the impact of packaging, which accounts for only 3% of landfill,” he said.

Searle attributed packaging’s negative public image to poor appreciation for the variety of different roles packaging performs, for example as part of the gift experience.

“If you don’t like packaging on Easter eggs, buy a chocolate bar instead,” he said. “And when your child bursts into tears when you give it to them [on Easter Sunday], tell them why you think it was important to reduce packaging.”

He also reminded delegates that in nine cases out of 10, retailers were responsible for specifying packaging, and it was packaging’s success as a service industry that enabled it to rise to the challenge, despite retailers’ failure to acknowledge its importance.

“It’s ingenuous for retailers to pretend that [“excess” packaging] is someone else’s fault.”

The environment was clearly a genuine cause for concern, he said, but decisions had to be made based on solid, well-informed facts.

“Growing crops to create plastics, when there are large parts of the world where people are starving, is also morally questionable,” added Searle.

Furthermore, he said lightweighting, contrary to popular belief, was not something that was discovered by the Waste and Resources Action Programme.

“I’ve been in this industry for some 40 years, and we’ve been working to create better products for all that time,” he said.