Signatories of the world-leading UK Plastics Pact gathered at London’s Tobacco Dock yesterday, to look back at its massive achievements – and also its failures.
As one source put it, we live in a very different world to 2018 – when David Attenborough’s Blue Planet was creating waves of national fury over ocean pollution, black plastic lined the supermarket shelves and the EPR monster was not yet uncorked from its bottle.
So the fact that the pact has missed some of its key goals (such as just 59% of plastic being effectively recycled in 2025, against a 70% target) should not overshadow its successes.
The eradication of 99.8% of “problematic” packaging is not to be sniffed at, despite the ongoing problems in getting rid of plastic film that are still dogging the industry.
Looking forward
But the real story is what happens next. It’s clear that the agreement’s successor, the not-very-imaginatively-named UK Packaging Pact, has problems on its hands, despite today officially unveiling 55 founder members, including supermarkets, manufacturers and academics.
As The Grocer revealed, Wrap has yet to secure the signatures of a raft of major companies that would typically be expected to be at the forefront of any industry initiative to take the war on plastic to the next level.
The absence of the likes of Unilever and Coca-Cola, as well as several supermarkets (despite Tesco adding its name at the very last minute), is certainly a blow to the new initiative, despite Wrap’s insistence that the signatories should only be counted at the pact’s official launch in April next year.
The issue lies not in the missing names themselves, but in the reasons behind those absences.
Growing concerns
There are concerns over the “astronomic cost” of signing to the new pact, a lack of formal goals and targets (as revealed by The Grocer last month) and also whether, given the huge change in geopolitics, technology and the competing goals of different companies, there is still a place for an over-arching pact like this that can unite the industry and set its agenda.
In particular, there have been questions over how the Packaging Pact will dovetail with extended producer responsibility, which Defra has promised will be largely run by the industry. Similar uncertainty surrounds the deposit return scheme. Unlike the 10-year lifetime of the new pact, DRS is due to launch in less than two years’ time.
Wrap and other pact signatories have also expressed concerns surrounding other key elements of the scheme; namely over the potential environmental harm from a system that encourages consumers to return their recycling direct to UK supermarkets.
But other supermarkets and suppliers are deep into DRS planning and have committed to it, not just as an environmental strategy but as a financial one too. Some argue that if EPR is managed correctly, it would make many elements of the pact completely irrelevant.
However, Wrap and other organisations at yesterday’s event point out that no other coalition carries the weight to tackle some of the huge challenges on plastic and other packaging material faced by the industry.
They also argue that the pact will have leverage with ministers to push for regulatory change where it is needed, something that is missing from other initiatives.
Of course that is where things get really sticky. Thanks to Covid, the Ukraine war, rollercoaster changes at Defra and a whole host of other changes, the government lead on plastic and packaging has been sporadic, to say the least.
Against that backdrop, it’s little wonder the industry has decided the best approach is to take matters into its own hands. The challenge, however, lies in finding harmony over who should lead and who is willing to follow – a task made clear by the absence of signatures, at least so far, on the new Packaging Pact.
No comments yet