The Glass Sellers Livery Company firmly supports affirmative action that drives greater responsibility for sustainability and circularity in industry to safeguard the environment and future generations.
The use of recycled material within the glass container manufacturing process is fundamental to reducing the energy used, reducing the emissions from the process and keeping costs down. Glass is a Permanent material, meaning that it does not degrade when remelted so glass containers can be infinitely recycled, in a circular economy, reducing emissions with every loop.
The first bottle banks appeared nearly 50 years ago and the industry has pushed recycling rates to over 75%, with a target to get to 90% by 2030, a level already being achieved in Wales.
To drive increased recycling for all packaging materials a suite of legislation were proposed back in 2018. Conceptually they should work like this:
- Consistent Collections – Local authorities should provide an efficient infrastructure to collect household waste at the lowest possible cost, while maintaining the quality of the materials collected to ensure the maximum yield when recycled.
- Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) – Producers and brand owners who are putting packaging onto the UK market would pay a fee to cover the cost of recycling those materials, via the efficient system mentioned above. Fees would be modulated to encourage the use of materials that are easy to recycle, thereby encouraging brands to design their packaging to reduce the EPR fees.
- Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) – Where goals were not being achieved then a Recycling Deposit Return Scheme would be implemented, meaning that consumers would be encouraged to recycle these materials as they would pay a deposit at point of purchase, which would be returned when the packaging was recycled.
Unfortunately, the legislation has been dogged by delays and changes. Industry now faces a major additional cost starting in 2025, although at this point the actual cost has not been confirmed, making it impossible for companies to budget.
For Glass there are a number of additional challenges, which British Glass Manufacturer’s Confederation is in dialogue with the Government to try to resolve:
- The proposed fees are weight based and so adds a bigger fee to a glass container, than the equivalent plastic container, although glass is 100% infinitely recyclable whereas plastic is not.
- Extended Producer Responsibility fees come into force in 2025, although the range of illustrative costs that are available at this stage mean that the high end of the range is double the low range making it impossible to budget and agree pricing for 2025.
- Deposit Return Scheme has been delayed until 2027 will include beverage cans and plastic bottles. While companies using packaging that is destined for the DRS will need to fund the new scheme, there are no defined fees so glass could be severely disadvantaged against other materials in the beverage market for nearly 3 years. This could lead to significant switching of packaging formats damaging the UK glass sector permanently.
- Fee modulation is also not planned to start in 2025 when the costs initially come in. This modulation is a key element to encourage the use of easier to recycle materials. There delay will again disadvantage materials which manufactures should be encouraged to use.
The Glass Sellers support the work British Glass is doing with DEFRA to find a solution, which supports the environmental and economic objectives and avoids safeguards a major UK manufacturing sector and employer.
Authors: Glass Committee Members & Liverymen Paul McLavin and Matthew Demmon
14th November 2024
