Amazon cardboard tax

Levy threat to web giant over recycling bills

AMAZON is facing the threat of a ‘cardboard box tax’ to help fund the huge cost of dealing with its packaging.

Councils are picking up bills running to tens of millions of pounds a year to collect and recycle cardboard from online retailers.

Currently, businesses which create cardboard waste pay towards collection and recycling through the Packaging Recycling Obligation system.

Now ministers are drawing up a new Resources and Waste Strategy that will see big increases in charges. Amazon and other online giants are likely to face levies related to the amount of packaging they send out.

Labour MP Mary Creagh, chairman of the Commons Environmental Audit Committee, said: ‘Online retailers should pay to recycle their packaging, but the UK’s recycling system lets them off the hook, leaving cash-strapped councils and taxpayers to pick up the tab.’ Amazon has been criticised by many shoppers for the oversized boxes and masses of paper it uses. Consumer group Which? highlighted examples such as a printer ink cartridge arriving in a box 11 times its size.

Lee Marshall, from the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee, said: ‘Years of austerity mean council budgets have been heavily squeezed, so it’s time for the UK to reform packing regu- lations so that producers pass funding through to local authorities to support and expand recycling collections.’

Industry expert Mark Hall, of Businesswaste.co.uk, said online retailers’ couriers should also collect packaging for recycling. ‘If Ocado can take back plastic carrier bags when making a delivery of groceries, then Amazon should take back boxes,’ he said.

Environment Minister Therese Coffey was reluctant to say what levies would be applied before the policy’s publication, which is likely to be in November, but said: ‘It is an area that is being considered.’

A spokesman for Amazon said it ‘complies with all legal requirements’, adding: ‘Over the past 10 years, we have eliminated more than 244,000 tons of packaging materials, avoiding the use of 500 million shipping boxes.’

Waitrose is to replace plastic bags for fruit and veg with compostable corn starch alternatives. The move will prevent 71million plastic bags being handed out each year.