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Summary

The undersigned associations representing the views of the plastics packaging value chain support the EU’s objective to achieve a circular economy and call for a regulatory framework that supports and further accelerates the circularity of plastic packaging through additional innovation and investments.


Europe needs a truly sustainable plastics packaging system which is able to compete globally. Against this backdrop, we support an EU policy framework aimed at the best overall environmental improvements without discriminating one specific material against the others.


We are therefore particularly concerned about the direction taken by the current policy discussions in the negotiations on the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) proposal both in the European Parliament and Council.


Several provisions in the PPWR clearly show an increasingly less material neutral approach. This is for example the case of Article 38 which draft compromise amendment in the European Parliament currently includes a material-specific target of waste reduction for plastics only. Furthermore, the latest Council Presidency proposal for Article 38 would enable a partial increase of waste generation per packaging material with the sole goal of avoiding the shift towards lighter materials like plastics.


This holds true also for the Reuse targets set out in Article 26, which should fairly apply to all materials. While the undersigned associations support measures increasing the reuse of plastics when it provides clear environmental benefits, we believe that exempting only a specific material from the reuse measures would create an unfair competitive advantage, without improving the circular economy of packaging. Furthermore, several measures in the Annex V of the proposal, aimed at reducing the amount of single use packaging, risk applying to plastics only, continuing to allow the use of single use formats if made by other materials.

 

Download our position paper to read more. 

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