News

Some in the packaging sector have been calling for a national strategy on recycling, and this morning we received the first indications that we may get one.

Unveiling the long-awaited Packaging Strategy, environment minister Hilary Benn revealed that the government is not only considering a total ban on aluminium and glass going to landfill, but will work with local authorities to increase the numbers of packaging types that can be recycled from the kerbside.

This sounds like good news. The greatest problem facing packaging recycling - and therefore packaging's public image - is that different collection systems around the country make it impossible to give a clear message to the public about what can and can't be recycled. Hopefully today's new policies are the first step in sorting that out, so that people can feel confident in both our industry and the recycling system.

It seems sensible to increase the powers to punish manufacturers who do produce unnecessarily bulky packs. There is, as we know, very little real excess packaging around. Nevertheless, the tiny number of convictions under the Packaging (Essential Requirements) Regulations - just five in six years - hints that the  rules have not been doing the job they were meant to.

A final point - today's announcement seems to suggest that the focus is primarily on waste reduction and better waste management, rather than measuring the environmental impact of packaging itself. With carbon measurements under PAS2050 and, to some extent at least, part two of the Courtauld Commitment, further compliance with expensive measures of carbon impact could have been damaging to packaging suppliers. So far, this does not seem to be the case.

Josh Brooks is editor of Packaging News