Green Dot is the most widely used trademark in the world.

Meaning: a financial contribution per tonnage of packaging waste has been made by the producer to have the packaging recovered and reprocessed into a new raw material. In the UK it is totally meaningless. 

In 21 other EU countries and Canada it signifies to consumers that the company cares about the environment and is fulfilling its obligations under the Producer Pays Principle. 

In the UK it is misleading consumers as it is misread as ‘packaging made from recycled materials’ or ‘packaging can be recycled’.  No financial contribution has been made for its recovery. 

Green Dot encourages responsible product and packaging design and green consumer behaviour – since companies save money the less packaging tonnage they have to recover and pay for. 

The Green Dot Financing Model guarantees packaging recycling and has led to incredibly high recycling rates in other EU countries – Belgium achieves a 90% recycling rate from household waste. Since the summer 2007 Germany has stopped sending household packaging waste to landfill!
                                                                                                                                              

By contrast, the UK dumps 27 million tonnes of rubbish into landfill every year and the country will be running out of landfill sites in 8 years’ time. 

VALPAK charges a licence fee for companies who want to display the Green Dot on items sold in the UK (the fee is waived for Valpak members), in order to ‘protect the trademark from misuse’. The annual flat licence fee ranges between £100 and £500. Contrary to other countries, the money does not finance recovery in the UK. 
 
In the UK smaller businesses are not obligated under the Producer Pays Principle, if turnover is below £2 million and their packaging is less than 50 tonnes per year. This leaves an awful lot of rubbish unsorted or wasted.
 
The UK’s PRN system based on free-market dynamics favours heavy and easy-to-collect waste materials. Plastics are consequently neglected as they are more difficult to sort and process. Frighteningly though, plastics don’t bio-degrade and linger for hundreds of years in landfill and made from oil deplete a valuable fossil fuel, when old plastics could be reprocessed saving virgin resources.