Ecoveritas is calling for clarity on the destination of hundreds of millions pounds raised from the UK Plastic Packaging Tax (PPT) and has highlighted the need for serious investment in closed-loop recycling infrastructure to meet the rising demand for recycled material.
With the first anniversary of the Treasury-led PPT being introduced approaching, HMRC is moving quickly to begin audits, with many predicting that the PPT rate will rise shortly according to the environmental compliance data specialist. Ecoveritas pointed out that the government is on target to take £250m from the PPT after it cost £20m to administer, but that the Treasury says the funds will not be ringfenced for recycling because it needs “flexibility to manage public finances”.
Josh Corradi-Remi, Ecoveritas’ commerical manager, said the funds generated by the PPT “present an opportunity to build a world-beating recycling infrastructure that can provide high-value, high-quality recycled materials to reduce dependency on virgin materials.”
He added: “PPT revenues of circa £230m could help deliver this. At the very least, businesses that have invested in compliance to pay these taxes or invested heavily in new equipment and processes that contribute to a closed-loop recycling infrastructure should be informed about how hundreds of millions in new revenues will be used.
“If we’re taking waste management as seriously as the government’s rhetoric would have you believe, then funnelling money into waste management to increase the number of processing facilities, funding the development of new recycling technologies, and facilitating the UK’s move to ban plastic waste exports by 2027, should be a no brainer. We should be scaling up to cater for the requirement to process all waste domestically and supporting efforts to reduce and reuse more plastics.”
