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SUPPLEMENT SUSTAINABILITY IN MANUFACTURING
REGULATIONS FOR THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY
PACKAGING
Raising awareness of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) to all packaging businesses is now critical in order for this long-awaited reform to succeed in accelerating the country’s movement towards a circular economy, as Sandy Dhesi, commercial manager at Ecoveritas, explains
take-make-waste to make-waste-make. Businesses like ours exist as a vital resource for those
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looking to understand how to connect materials with manufacturing and the means of distribution and consumption. Our tools and expertise activates incisive analysis and minimises the environmental impact of packaging.
PACKAGING REGULATIONS We are living in the golden age of packaging. There is a broader array of options and more consumer demand than at any other time in history – and discarded plastics and other packaging materials are filling up landfill sites. Most companies don’t even know how much they are putting on the market and, now, we are redefining how we hold producers accountable for their waste. Required actions under packaging Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) finally began in January 2023, over four years after it was announced by the government in the Resources and Waste Strategy for England by Michael Gove and his team. Organisations should be aware how this will affect them, however
most packaging producers impacted by the new regulations are at best confused and at worst completely oblivious to what’s coming their way.
REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE Reduce, reuse and recycle is the standard cradle-to-grave manufacturing model dating back to the Industrial Revolution that we still follow today. Extended Producer Responsibility proposes that instead of minimising waste, we should strive to create value. This is the essence of Cradle to Cradle: waste need not exist at all. However, recycling levels in the UK have plateaued at around 44%. As natural resources dwindle, designers are exploring the
potential of increasingly plentiful waste streams to become the raw materials of the future. In the past, the design industry has often struggled to properly
embrace sustainability, with some viewing it as a cumbersome add-on to true innovation. The old ‘throw-away’ model of packaging production is still dominant, and technologies are still being designed without considering the need for recovery. EPR has proven to be one of the most efficient and effective ways
of tackling our waste problem. Providing the ongoing and sufficient funding scheme we need when designed correctly, it drives proper
he challenges we face today are enormous, but so is the influence we have – and we can create positive change on behalf of future generations. It’s time to turn the cycle from
environmental outcomes by putting money into the right places: money that’s raised in the system stays in the system. And that’s welcome news given that a
reported additional cost of approximately £1.2 billion of investment in around 30 materials recycling facilities (MRFs) will be required to meet the government’s recycling target of 65% by 2035. Better still, this can be achieved
using existing, proven technologies and processes, and there is a vibrant, competitive, skilled sector with access to the capital to make this happen. The next few months will be crucial for our industry to get the packaging producers community up to speed with Defra’s EPR guidance, fully ready and willing to embrace the first EPR submission for large organisations in October 2023. With the packaging EPR threshold reduced to half that of the
previous regulations in terms of annual turnover and tonnage of packaging handled, small organisations currently out of scope of the old packaging regulations system will have to start collecting packaging data from January 2023, ready to register and submit their data in 2024. Even businesses under the threshold will have to comply with
mandatory labelling requirements from 2026 to inform consumers about the recyclability of their packaging.
END OF WASTE STATUS We’re on the verge of a regulatory environment that offers clarity, consistency and confidence in relation to achieving end-of-waste (EoW) status. However, we are a lot closer than people think. The solutions to moving us through this cost-of-living crisis
are accelerating the transition to green energy and business, and embracing technologies we have spent so long developing. The packaging supply chain should expect EPR to go full steam ahead, and businesses can now get a sense of how to plan ahead and what regulations will dictate packaging design. Despite a backdrop of uncertainty, the packaging industry has
continued to innovate, create and try things that could make an impact in the future. With brands and retailers showing no signs of relaxing their sustainable targets, it’s been up to packaging specialists to respond – and they have done just that.
Ecoveritas
www.ecoveritas.com
38 DESIGN SOLUTIONS - SUPPLEMENT FEBRUARY 2023 Sandy Dhesi
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