Parliament has formalised the removal of the provision in Article 23 of the ‘Climate and Resilience’ Act of 22 August 2021, which foresaw a ban of styrenic packaging considered non-recyclable and unable to enter a recycling stream from 1st January 2025. By bringing national law into line with the European PPWR regulation, the Parliament has confirmed the French executive's position of ruling out any ‘overtransposition’.
This is a clear response for all the sector's professionals, who are now working with greater stability to develop a recycling chain that will make styrenic packaging recycled at scale by 2035. In the meantime, styrenic packaging can be marketed in the same way as all other plastic packaging.
European regulation 2025/40 - which is directly applicable in national law - requires packaging, including styrenics, to be recyclable from 2030. Consequently, the French ban from 2025 is incompatible with this new framework.
In June 2024, in response to an oral question from the Senator for Loir-et-Cher, Bernard Pillefer, the Government had announced that it was necessary to “avoid any risk of over-transposition and to allow time for plastic resin projects to come to fruition” and indicated that “it will be up to Parliament to amend Article L. 541-15-10 of the Environmental Code”. In September 2024, in order to avoid any overlap between French and European law, the Government published a note that took account of this incompatibility.
By removing the provision created by the Climate and Resilience Act and bringing French law into line with the new European law, the “DDADUE1” Act provides the clarity and stability needed to secure existing and future investments and ensure the long-term future of the industry.
In this context, Elipso and its members will continue to develop their CreaStyr roadmap, in order to achieve the full-scale recyclability expected by 2035 by the PPWR. Work initiated in this project has already led to the eco-design of XPS (extruded polystyrene) trays and EPS (expanded polystyrene) white goods packaging to encourage their separation for recycling at sorting facilities, the deployment of new collection points at waste disposal centres or separated collection for EPS packaging and the launch of experimental collection standards
for professional EPS packaging.
1. Bill containing various provisions for adapting to European Union law in the fields of economics, finance, the environment, energy, transport, health and the movement of persons