Fibre-based composite (FBC) packaging producers may have been ‘significantly overcharged’ as part of the packaging Extended Producer Responsibility (pEPR) scheme, new research finds.
According to the analysis, commissioned by ACE UK (The Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment), the £461 per tonne pEPR fee for FBCs has been ‘incorrectly calculated’, with the true figure being £34/t lower and potentially as high as £92/t.
Applied to the fees producers paid for FBC materials last year, this suggests that fees could have been overpaid by between £6.3m and £13.7m.
ACE UK has submitted the report to PackUK, the scheme administrator for the pEPR scheme, and called on them to ‘urgently review’ future fees.
A team of researchers at compliance scheme Beyondly authored the review, led by packaging experts Charlotte Davies, CIWM Early Careers President, Dr Liz Wood, and Alex Hilton.
The report identifies several areas where it says current assumptions materially overstate the cost burden applied to FBC packaging.
The most significant of these relates to the cost to local authorities of collecting packaging for recycling or disposal, with the scheme currently charging £509/t to collect FBC compared with £264/t for paper and card.
The report says this disparity is despite the two waste streams having ‘very similar properties’.
As the collection figure is calculated based on the volume of packaging rather than its weight, Beyondly found that this may also overstate the amount of space taken up by FBCs in two ways.
Firstly, the report says the model ‘appears to assume’ that more of the FBC category is made of liquid cartons than is actually the case, which has a significant impact as cartons take up more space in collection vehicles.
Secondly, the report found the model assumes that non-liquid FBCs have the same bulk density as the card category, which is predominantly made up of bulky corrugated cardboard boxes.
By using available data on both the liquid/non-liquid split and the estimated bulk density of non-liquid FBCs, Beyondly found that the collection costs applied may have been ‘significantly overstated’.
Commenting on the report, Charlotte Davies, Senior Consultant – Resource Efficiency & Circularity, Beyondly, said the current fee appears to be ‘disproportionately high’ for fibre-based composites, and data revisions could reduce the disposal fee by approximately 8%.
Ben Powell, Head of External Affairs at ACE UK, commented: “It is clearly implausible to charge nearly twice as much for local authorities to collect a tonne of FBC than a tonne of paper and card.”
“The impact of this discrepancy alone seems to have cost brands millions of pounds more than it should have done last year.”
“We look forward to continuing to work constructively with PackUK to ensure disposal fees are fair for all packaging types, which is essential if we want to make our shared sustainability goals a reality.”