In May 2007, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) published the UK’s vision for sustainable waste management in its ‘Waste Strategy for England 2007’. It makes clear that businesses should take responsibility for the environmental impact of products they place on the market, including when they become waste.

The Strategy notes that recycling of glass can yield significant greenhouse gas benefits when glass is recycled as containers rather than aggregate substitutes. The Strategy proposes light-weighting glass in containers through ‘best in class’ standard for products, e.g. wine bottles; developing and trialling collection services for glass from small businesses (e.g. licensed premises); and developing a specification for minimum recycled content for glass products. Click here for more information.

In July 2008, Defra published a progress report on the commitments made in the Waste Strategy for England 2007 with the following updates:

• The Report notes that an compromise agreement has been reached between the Council of Environment Ministers and the European Parliament in June 2008 on revisions to the EU Waste Framework Directive which will come into force in 2010. The main changes include EU-wide targets for reuse and recycling. There is also a requirement for separate collection of paper, glass, metals and plastic by 2015 “where this is technically, environmentally and economically practicable”.
• WRAP is working on its Glassrite wine project glass packaging and wine bottling in UK with the glass industry, the supermarkets, and the wine brands to encourage bulk importation of wine and bottling in the UK in lightweight bottles with a high recycled content. Bulk importation of wine for UK filling has increased by approximately 79 million 75cl bottles from 2006 to 2008. This move has brought an additional 23,930 tonnes/annum of recovered glass back into closed loop recycling i.e. using recycled glass to make new wine bottles in the UK. This has saved approximately 7,538 tonnes of CO2.
• A good practice method of glass collection by Local Authorities has been completed for dissemination in the next year. This emphasises the importance of the quality of glass being collected as this is vital to enable closed loop recycling
• A potential Recycled Content Protocol has been developed to calculate the recycled content in glass containers produced in the UK. It is intended that this will be used by retailer and brands to specify and drive up the recycled content in containers.
• A programme to stimulate increased glass collection from the hospitality sector has been launched.

The full report is available here.

The UK Government has also introduced the Climate Change Act 2008 which sets out the UK target to reduce CO2 emissions through domestic and international action by 60% by 2050 and 26-32% by 2020, against a 1990 baseline.

See here for more information.