Fish importer and distributor Polarfrost Seafoods Ltd has been fined a total of £23,644 at Grimsby Magistrates' Court for failing its environmental duty for at least two years. The court was told that although the company was first approached in December 2005, it was not until February 2007 that company representatives provided further information and agreed to an interview with the Environment Agency about breaches of packaging legislation, the current version of which is the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations SI 2007/871.
The company imports and distributes frozen sea fish from its premises in Grimsby and is a subsidiary of Young's Bluecrest Seafood Ltd. As a company which handles more than 300 tonnes of packaging and has a turnover of more than £2million per year, Polarfrost should have been recycling since at least 2001 when the company was taken over, but had failed to do so. Although companies are obliged to recycle under the Packaging Regulations, they are not required to physically recover and recycle the packaging themselves. There are systems in place to allow the businesses to pay other organisations to carry out the obligations on their behalf. For each year a company qualifies it has to do three things:
Polarfrost pleaded guilty to not complying in 2004 and 2005, and asked for a further two years of non-compliance to be taken into consideration by magistrates.
