Ahead of Global Recycling Day, environmental compliance data specialist Ecoveritas is calling on the government to clarify how the funds raised from UK Plastic Packaging Tax (PPT) will be used.
Ecoveritas says the government is on target to take £250 million from the PPT after it cost £20 million to administer, but the funds will not be ringfenced for recycling.
Ecoveritas’ Commerical Manager, Josh Corradi-Remi, said the funds generated by the PPT present an opportunity to build a “world-beating recycling infrastructure that can provide high-value, high-quality recycled materials to reduce dependency on virgin materials”.
“PPT revenues of circa £230 million could help deliver this. At the very least, businesses that have invested in compliance to pay these taxes or invested heavily in new equipment and processes that contribute to a closed-loop recycling infrastructure should be informed about how hundreds of millions in new revenues will be used.”
World-beating recycling infrastructure that can provide high-value, high-quality recycled materials to reduce dependency on virgin materials.
Corradi-Remi continues that if the government is taking waste management “seriously” then investing in the sector to increase the number of processing facilities, fund the development of new recycling technologies and facilitate the UK’s move to ban plastic waste exports by 2027, should be a “no brainer”.
Ecoveritas has also called for serious investment in closed-loop recycling infrastructure to meet the rising demand for recycled material.
Head of Sustainability Consulting, Kathy Illingworth, added that the UK “urgently needs a properly funded, transparent EPR (extended producer responsibility) system that supports real recycling in the UK and cracks down on illegal waste exports”.
“A piece of the puzzle that doesn’t receive enough attention is our obsession with convenience. We need to stop overpraising convenience and pride ourselves in trying to avoid consuming things that produce waste intentionally.
“We all need to connect with the waste we are creating and stop thinking that because it’s taken away from us, it isn’t our responsibility to reduce it.”