Manage your packaging obligations with our Packaging Compliance Scheme
The UK Packaging Regulations place obligations on certain companies to contribute to the costs of recycling of a proportion of the packaging they handle. We can help manage your obligations, ensuring you are compliant, so you can concentrate on running your business.
How we can help
Any business, or Group of businesses, with an annual turnover of £2 million that has taken an active role in manufacturing, packing, selling or importing packaged goods for the UK market, and handled more than 50 tonnes of packaging materials in the previous year must comply with UK packaging regulations.
In simple terms, packaging is classed as anything used 'for the containment, protection, handling, delivery and presentation of goods'.
There are six main packaging materials:
- Paper/card: Cardboard boxes, labels, edge protectors, dividers, internal rolls etc.
- Glass: Bottles, jars etc.
- Plastic: Bottles, pots, tubs and trays, films, shrink wrap, drums, IBC's etc.
- Aluminium: Cans, foil trays, aerosols etc.
- Steel: Cans, drums, banding etc.
- Wood: Pallets, crates, spacers etc
By joining the Veolia Packaging Compliance Scheme, we take on your legal obligations. We will visit your site to make you aware of your obligations and help you capture the relevant data. Then as a member, you submit your annual packaging data based on the previous calendar year, and we will calculate your obligations, purchasing the required Packaging Recovery Notes (PRNs) on your behalf.
How do we create value for you?
One of the real advantages of our registered compliance scheme is that our core business is waste management. So, no-one is better placed to advise you on best practice to minimise your waste and help reduce your packing obligations. We utilise waste collected by the wider business to provide PRNs for the scheme, with many coming from our own accreditations.
Your account manager will be on hand to offer support with data collection and other packaging queries. They will ensure everything is reported to the required standards and you remain compliant. Unlike many other schemes, PRNs are charged quarterly in arrears, based on costs incurred with no nasty surprises.
Consumer Information Obligations (CIO)
If your main activity is selling packaging, you are obliged, under the Consumer Information Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations, to provide your customers with information.
First imposed in 2000, you must provide your customers with information on:
- Where the packaging you have supplied can be recycled and recovered
- The role consumers have in contributing to UK recycling and recovery systems
- How you are taking steps to recycle and recover packaging
- Applicable packaging sections of the National Waste Strategy
Veolia can help you offset this obligation, get in touch with us to find out more about our Packaging Compliance Scheme or visit the Recycle Now website for further information, including where you can find the various packaging symbols explained.
