Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
360-362)
MS JILL
ARDAGH, MR
PAUL SMITH
AND MS
JANE MILNE
24 NOVEMBER 2008
Q360 Lynne Jones: Both your organisations
have expressed some frustration at the variation in local authority
recycling schemes which makes it difficult to send consistent
messages to consumers about what they can recycle. Have you any
suggestions as to how consistency could be improved?
Ms Milne: I think it is extremely
important that consumers do get those consistent messages. We
have a proposal that our board will be looking at this week to
go into a joint venture with the Food and Drink Federation to
launch an on-pack labelling scheme that will provide consumers
with advice about whether the material is easily recycled across
most local authorities, could well be recycled or cannot currently
be recycled, in order to help get over that messaging and hopefully
persuade local authorities to join with us in providing a more
consistent service.
Q361 Lynne Jones: But a lot of local
authorities do not collect much in particular of the plastic waste
that is produced. How is your industry working with waste infrastructure
providers to ensure that their needs are met because the local
authorities say there is not the infrastructure to support all
but minimal amounts of plastics recycling, for example?
Ms Milne: Of course, every year
we make very significant contributions through the PRN system
to help finance the infrastructure. I think there are a number
of issues around that. It is not just finance, it is not just
regulation; it is also getting the planning system able to build
recycling plants and get the infrastructure in place, but we have
been engaged, and indeed as a sector have led, a cross-industry
forum precisely to sit down with local authorities and others
in the whole waste sector to try and iron out some of these problems
and make some progress.
Q362 Lynne Jones: You are not alone
in having identified the planning system as an obstacle here.
Is there any way that your organisations can help make this kind
of infrastructure more acceptable to the public, perhaps through
information that you could provide on packaging or whatever?
Ms Milne: We are engaged in an
awful lot of communication with consumers but it comes back to
the same point I was making around single use carrier bags, that
this is public policy. Yes, we have an important role to play
in this but we cannot deliver the whole of Defra's environment
policy for them. They need to put some resources behind it as
well and help us on this. We see it very much as something that
we are part of a partnership on.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
We have the Minister coming next so she can tell us what this
policy is all going to be about. We shall all be better advised
and educated. May I thank you very much indeed for your contribution.
I am sorry it is a little curtailed by today's events but we very
much value your views.
| 
