UK Environment Minister Dan Norris, MP, has told retailers and brand owners that he expects them to sign up to the British Retail Consortium’s universal on-pack recycling label scheme designed to end confusion about what can be recycled.
Speaking at the IGD Packaging & Product Resource Efficiency conference in London in October, Mr Norris said he would personally be checking who was not in the scheme. The Minister described packaging as the ‘most important’ area in his DEFRA brief, which also covers bio-fuels and genetic modification of foods.
He was pleased to note a shift in production mentality. “We are at a turning point,” the Minister said. “We are starting to think from the start of the process - everything is linked, with knock-on effects to everything we produce.”
Mr Norris mentioned that Courtauld 2 would soon replace the first Courtauld Commitment, a voluntary agreement that set the UK’s retailers and brand owners on a journey towards improved resource efficiency in 2005. He said the fresh agreement ‘will target absolute reductions’ in packaging.
He hopes Courtauld 2 ‘provides innovation in the sector’ and ‘pushes the resource efficiency agenda’ by introducing more recycled content and more recyclable content in packaging.
Questioned on the UK Government’s stance on incineration, the Minister said it is ‘the last port of call’.
