The Australian Packaging Covenant (APC) has finished the year on a high note, with its 2013 annual report revealing strong progress in all its major activities and putting it on track to meet its strategic targets for 2015.
APC chief executive Stan Moore told PKN its 2013 results were particularly pleasing, with the organisation meeting or exceeding nearly all its key performance indicators (KPIs) across the board.
“It shows that the covenant, as a product stewardship model, is really starting to hit its straps,” Moore told PKN.
“We are pretty happy with the numbers. We've hit all our goals from packaging design right through to our various litter reduction and recycling campaigns.”
Highlights reported by the APC include:
- An increase in the packaging recycling rate, with the 2013 rate at 64.2 per cent, up from 39 per cent in the baseline year of 2003 and from 63.8 per cent last year;
- A continued reduction in litter based on the National Litter Index, which showed a national average number of 56 litter items per 1000 square metres, a decrease of 3.4 per cent over the previous year;
- A record number of signatories to the Covenant, which now stands at 925 members, with a 95 per cent compliance rate in meeting their APC obligations;
- An improvement across all KPIs reported by APC signatories; and
- The provision of $55.4 million in funding over the past three years to finance 75 new recycling and litter related projects.
Moore told PKN one of the few flat spots in its progress over the past year was in the recycling of glass packaging, where a slight increase in recycling volumes failed to keep pace with a 6.7 per cent annual growth in glass container consumption since 2010.
“We also had some processing issues with glass this year, but we have some significant new processing capability due to come on stream soon, which I'm confident will allow us to catch up,” he said.
Moore said the APC was well placed now to meet its major strategic targets set for 2015, but cautioned it could not rest on its laurels.
“All of our KPIs are heading in the right direction, which is encouraging, because we have some ambitious targets for 2015 that we really need to hit,” he said
