Producer responsibility
In the UK, producer responsibility is an extension of the
"polluter pays" principle. It aims to ensure that businesses who
place products on the market take responsibility for those products
once they have reached the end of their life.
The Producer
Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations
2008 are intended to encourage the minimisation of packaging
and packaging waste, incentivise re-use and increase the recovery
and recycling of packaging waste.
The regulations place an obligation on certain businesses who
satisfy two threshold tests to recover and recycle specified
tonnages of packaging waste each year. The amount each business has
to recover is determined by three factors:
- the amount of packaging the business handles;
- the business recovery and recycling targets for the year;
- the activity the business carries out on packaging.
Organisations are obligated under the producer responsibility
regulations if they meet both of the following two
threshold tests:
- they handle more than 50 tonnes of packaging a year
and
- they have a turnover in excess of £2 million per annum.
Priority waste streams
The following Directives were identified in the
European Union's Fifth Environment Action Programme as "priority
waste streams" because of growing concern about their impact on the
environment. These Directives clearly place responsibility on
producers to bear the costs of collection, sorting or treatment and
recycling or recovery. All of these Directives have been
transposed into UK law. We provide further information in the
following sections.