WREXHAM Council has taken part in a consultation on reforming the UK Packaging Producer Responsibility System.

The consultation asked for views on proposed measures to ‘reduce the amount of unnecessary and difficult to recycle packaging and increase the amount of packaging that can be and is recycled, through reforms to the packaging producer responsibility regulations’.

Councillor David A Bithell, lead member for environment and transport said: “We welcomed the opportunity to put our views across in the consultation and we responded strongly on behalf of Wrexham about how producers should take much more responsibility for their packaging.

“We stated our opinion on the best ways to reduce unnecessary and hard to recycle packaging, and we stressed the importance of giving the public clear recycling information about the packaging they’re using…because it’s only with this information that they can make informed choices.”

There were 95 questions in total in the consultation, so the authority won't be able to cover everything, but the following are some of the important points the council made:

- There is far too much unnecessary packaging and difficult to recycle packaging as it stands.

- Businesses should bear full net cost of any packaging produced that requires disposal.

- Producers should be required to fund the costs of collecting and managing household and household-like packaging waste.

- Any proposed deposit return scheme should be deferred until after the proposed EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) and consistency changes have been introduced and given time to bed in.

- Better labelling would help education of what can and can not be recycled.

- It should be mandatory for producers to label their packaging as ‘recyclable’ or ‘not recyclable’