All the best ideas are simple at their core but also can devilishly complex in their detail.
In the United Kingdom, one piece of new legislation that came into effect on Jan. 1, 2025, for all businesses with revenue of more than £1 million is adding yet more operational costs to businesses amid a general landscape of rising energy, food, water and supply-chain costs.
Extended Producer Responsibility is a noble idea — one that has been in the public domain for several years, so it is not as though it has been sprung on anyone — that puts the onus on businesses to account for their own packaging recycling.
The bottom line is that responsibility will fall on the shoulders of hoteliers for the collection, sorting and recycling or disposal of their own product packaging.
Hotels and other businesses have had to report their relevant information for some months already, and those who run afoul of the legislation could incur fines of this October.
Smaller businesses need to report their first numbers to the authorities from this April.
Who does not want to see waste properly dealt with and recycled, reduced and even commoditized, but there are many in the hotel industry who say that hotels are doubly weighed down by the new legislation.
Hotels are responsible for a lot of waste, regardless of the excellent awareness of the problem, initiatives around it and even the sharing of information between business rivals.
Doubly weighed, some hoteliers say, because firstly because hotels will be charged a fee based on their exposure to EPR, and secondly because the requirement to keep hotels spick and span, welcoming, clean and beautiful inevitably requires hoteliers to use commercial waste services in addition to those of local jurisdictions.
Here comes the daunting details.
Hoteliers must understand — and have their staff understand — what packaging constitutes what type of packaging, so as not to incur penalties, and a glance across the descriptions and answers to these leaves at least my head aching.
It is not a clear distinction between “household” and “non-household” packaging, as far as hotels are concerned, when one would have thought that hotels would not have “household” packaging. Or maybe I read that wrong. Certainly, I am struggling to understand.
A letter from UKHospitality on March 20 stated that due to "poor policy design, bottles of beer and wine are incorrectly classified as household waste and subject to a packaging levy, despite not ever leaving the hospitality premises."
Hotel F&B outlets might be subject to different rules for in-house and takeaway dining.
Well, it’s all here if you’re having trouble sleeping.
Kate Nicholls, CEO, UKHospitality, has written to government asking for clarity.
Perish the thought! This is, after all, a creation of bureaucrats.
“We understand that tracking packaging is complex, but there needs to be a clear and simple route for both wholesalers and hospitality businesses to demonstrate when packaging is non-household,” Nicholls pleads.
Hoteliers should be looking at their own systems and compliance, and most are, if only to act on initiatives to save money, satisfy guest requirement for green policies and the like.
Less waste means less work and perhaps more profit.
Another concern — and this is always the case, I imagine — is that any fines and also any funding for EPR be themselves recycled into providing the infrastructure to help the scheme and reduce the opportunities to run afoul of it.
Funds can be wasted far more easily than can packaging.
The British Retail Consortium in December of 2022 released metrics stating that in the U.K. there has been since 2018 an 84% reduction in the use of what it terms “problematic plastics,” most likely single-use plastics, and a 70% rate of the recycling of plastic.
So, plans do work.
It is just that change requires guidance, and, please, simplicity where possible.
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