Princes, an international food and drink group has invested over £750,000 this year in to the UK’s recycling infrastructure by ensuring that all its packaging recycling evidence is sourced solely from UK reprocessors.
The UK Packaging Waste Regulations dictate that UK businesses with an annual turnover of £2 million that handle over 50 tonnes of packaging must show they have met government recycling targets by acquiring recovery notes (PRNs) from recycling businesses.
These provide evidence that waste packaging material has been recycled into a new product.
The additional income from PRNs can be used by recycling companies to invest in their ability to process increasing quantities of packaging waste sustainably.
At present, just over half of recovery notes required by UK businesses are issued by UK recyclers, with the remainder issued by international recycling companies.
Packaging exports have increased six-fold since 2002, according to a National Audit Office report.
The report also stated that there was a risk that some material was not handled to UK standards ‘and is instead sent to landfill or contributes to pollution’.
It is Princes preference that it maintains this UK only position and that by doing so the business will foster more investment in UK recycling.
“By purchasing export PRNs, businesses are moving potential investment into the UK’s recycling capacity overseas. At a time when single-use packaging is under such heavy scrutiny, we need to improve the UK’s ability to recycle sustainably,” said David McDiarmid, Corporate Relations Director at Princes.
“Recycling technology and scalability is developing all the time – this process will speed up with more UK investment, hence our move to reject export PRNs.”