Supermarket bosses have called on the government to go back to the drawing board on key elements of its flagship recycling reforms.
The BRC, which represents the UK’s leading food and drink retailers, told environment secretary Thérèse Coffey today that the existing plans for extended producer responsibility (EPR) were “fundamentally flawed”. Without an urgent rethink, they would land retailers and shoppers with a £1.7bn bill without any substantial improvements to recycling services, it said.
Retailers have set out six key areas they say need to be changed to prevent EPR being a failure.
They include a demand that all funds generated by EPR are ringfenced to be spent on the UK recycling system, that the scheme is industry-led, and that it is delayed to allow more time for delivery.
The BRC also wants clearer information on the fees required for different materials covered by the scheme, and for the reforms to have much greater co-ordination with other environmental measures such as regulation of household waste collection.
The latest warnings come after talks with Defra aimed at solving the problems with EPR ended in breakdown. The Grocer revealed last month that supermarket and supplier bosses had written to Coffey warning they feared signing a multi-billion “blank cheque” for the proposals.
It came after Coffey held an emergency meeting with the BRC as well as executives from Marks & Spencer, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Sainsbury’s and Unilever.
BRC CEO Helen Dickinson said today: “It’s time that government went back to the drawing board.
“We have the opportunity to get it right on the future of a waste management scheme that will determine UK recycling rates for a generation. We want to see a scheme which improves recycling in the UK and ensures a steady supply of recyclable material that can be reused for future packaging.
“Under existing proposals, funding meant for UK recycling could end up servicing local authority debt or be put to uses which do not improve our national recycling infrastructure. Government’s haste to introduce a new system is undermining the system itself. It’s time to work with retailers and manufacturers to ensure the public get a world-class recycling system that collects and processes as much recyclable material as possible.”
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