Firm fined £18,000 for breaching recycling regulations (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Firm fined £18,000 for breaching recycling regulations

2:28pm Thursday 27th December 2007 in News By Andy Woolfoot

A COTSWOLDS firm has been fined over £18,000 for failing to recover and recycle more than 320 tonnes of packaging waste.

The Cotswold Company Ltd, a home furnishings company based in Upper Rissington near Bourton-on-the-Water, last Friday pleaded guilty to failing to register with the Environment Agency as a producer of packaging waste.

It also pleaded guilty to failing to meet its requirements to recover and recycle packaging waste for 2004 and 2005.

Similar offences between 1999-2003 were taken into consideration by Gloucestershire Magistrates Court for sentencing.

The company, which supplies home furnishings from shops, catalogues and via the internet, was fined a total of £10,000 and ordered to pay £2,378.40 in costs to the Environment Agency.

Magistrates also ordered compensation of £6,086 to be paid to the Environment Agency for avoided registration fees from 1999-2005.

Under packaging waste regulations all businesses with an annual turnover in excess of £2 million that handle more than 50 tonnes of packaging each year, must be registered with the Environment Agency or a compliance scheme.

Responding to EA requests for details on its packing usage, the company said its annual turnover was £18m and the amount of packaging handled as over 12 tonnes.

However, this amount only included packaging that was purchased on the company's behalf by a distribution company, and not packaging already on the goods.

Environment Officer Sue Gebbels said: "The money raised from compliance with this legislation goes directly to the recycling industry and the failure by this company to ensure they met their responsibilities means that there was less investment in the recycling industry than there should have been.

"There is information available to businesses to ensure they meet they environmental responsibility. It is important companies take this responsibility seriously to stop the tonnes of packaging piling up in the UK's limited landfill sites."

The District Judge gave the company full credit for an early plea but said the period they had not been registered had to be taken into account. The company has since registered under the regulations.