Budwieser Budva UK has handed Keep Britain Tidy £414,000 after it emerged the beer importer has been breaching recycling regulations for 18 years.

The Bristol based firm should have registered in 2004 as a packaging producer and taken measures to ensure its waste is recovered and recycled.

But an Environment Agency probe found that it had failed to do so, with the company claiming it was unaware of the regulations involved.

It has now contributed the money to Keep Britain Tidy as part of an enforcement undertaking, whereby environmental rule breakers agree to pay money to a charity as an alternative to prosecution.

The money will be used to support Keep Britain Tidy’s Great British Spring Clean campaign.

It has been calculated as the amount that has been saved by the firm for not recycling or recovering its packaging, plus a penalty of 30%.

“It’s important that businesses take responsibility for the packaging that they place on the UK market,” said the Environment Agency’s Jake Richardson.

“The Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations ensure that businesses such as Budweiser Budvar UK Ltd contribute towards the cost of recycling the packaging that they add to the UK waste-stream.

“In this case, we investigated and found they had failed to comply with the regulations and had consequently not paid its rightful share towards the recycling of its packaging.

“When the company realised this, it wanted to do the right thing and so it submitted an Enforcement Undertaking offer, which ensured that all avoided recycling costs were donated to a project that will enhance, restore and protect England’s natural environment.”

He added that the firm “is now fully complaint” with packaging regulations and “has put processes in place to ensure continued compliance in the future”.

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