Packaging Waste Management

Accurately determine your company responsibilities

Carry out your legislative responsibilities with a minimal effort. Vital to comply with UK regulations, this module can help you accurately determine your company responsibilities.

If you are a business with a turnover of more than £2 million and handle over 50 tons of packaging per year you are now legally obliged to report the packaging tonnages handled annually to the Environment Agency.

Businesses that perform one or more of the following activities on packaging materials or packaging that they own and supply to another stage in the packaging chain or to the final user are affected by this:

• Packaging raw material manufacture
• Converting
• Packing or filling
• Selling

Of these, only businesses with a turnover of more than £2m per annum (£1m from 2000) and an obligated packaging handled of greater than 50 tonnes per annum are now required by the 'Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 1997' legislation to report the number of tonnes of packaging manufactured or supplied during the previous year.

Reasonable estimates under the legislation were acceptable for the years 1998 and 1999 but from the year 2000 onwards reported figures must be "as accurately as reasonably possible".
The reporting must be done either by you directly to the Environment Agency (or the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency), or via a registered compliance scheme.

Obligated packaging handled is the metric tonnage of packaging handled in the previous calendar year. Exported packaging and process waste are excluded, but imported packaging is included. Re-useable packaging is only counted once, either at manufacture or first use.

Based on the obligated packaging handled, businesses are required to calculate recovery and recycling obligations. Recovery refers to recycling, energy recovery or composting, while recycling is the reprocessing of waste materials in a production process into new materials. Businesses are required to report their tonnage handled and recovery/recycling obligation, and to prove at the end of each year that they have reached the required level of recovery/recycling.

To comply with the regulations you will need a system to record the necessary packaging data so that you can calculate what your obligations will be. You then need to decide whether to meet the obligations yourself or join a compliance scheme.

Key Features Complies with UK regulations Report packaging tonnages handled annually Report directly to the Environment Agency or via a registered compliance scheme Calculate recovery and recycling obligations Record necessary packaging data

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