Have you registered your Carbon Reduction Commitment yet?

Don’t forget that if your organisation has any half-hourly electricity meters that were in use in 2008 the deadline for registering under the new CRC scheme is 30th September 2010. Failure to do so will lead to a £500 fine per unregistered meter. If this applies to you, you might think this means you have over a month to get your paperwork completed, however, the scheme’s administrators have indicated that they will be checking the identities of all applicants before registering them under the scheme and that this will add at least two weeks to the application procedure Read more…

What a load of rubbish!

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a blog about the cost of complying with – or rather failing to comply with – packaging waste legislation. Now, following on the same theme, Andrew Roclawski has posted an article on his blog about the rising cost of landfill tax. With the price per tonne due to increase by an inflation-busting £8 every year for the foreseeable future this is a significant cost that will impact on the profitability of every organisation, public or private, disposing of waste to landfill sites. Andrew, who before joining Auditel spent many years in the building and waste management industries, has some useful insights into the issues this rising cost will force companies to address over the coming years and has included a ‘hot cost saving tip’ for anybody whose business produces clinical waste.

The real cost of packaging waste

One of our consultants, Terry Crouch, has been doing some waste management work for a client recently and as a result came across an article about another local company that fell foul of the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 2007 following a routine Environment Agency visit. These oblige any company with an annual turnover in excess of £2 million and handling more than 50 tonnes of wood, aluminium, steel, cardboard or plastic packaging waste a year to register with the Enviroment Agency or an approved compliance scheme. Each year, they must also provide evidence of payment for recovery and recycling of a specified proportion of their packaging.  And the real cost of these obligations? Well, this company was fined a total of £23,000 for not meeting them! Of course, Terry’s client won’t have this problem as he’ll ensure all the paperwork and bureacracy is in order as an integral part of his management service.

EU cap data roaming charges

New EU legislation came into force today to cap data wholesale roaming charges within Europe.  The new cap limits the amount operators can charge each other to carry customer’s data traffic while abroad, lowering the price from €1 to €0.80 per megabyte. In addition, all carriers will now have to stop providing data roaming services when users have racked up a total of €50 in charges, the idea being to protect customers from ‘bill shock’ when they return home.

The EU’s digital agenda commissioner, Neelie Kroes, is keen to promote more competition in EU roaming charges, which operators tend to set very close to the legal permitted maximums. These maximum charges are currently under review and the Commission will provide more information about how it intends to ensure increased competition when the results of this review are published in mid-2011.

Source: ZDNet.co.uk