According to Virginia Janssens, Managing Director, Plastics Europe, “The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation is one of the most important elements of the plastics transition enabling framework. So, although Plastics Europe welcomes a number of decisions taken by the European Parliament, we believe today’s Plenary vote was a missed opportunity to strengthen this critical piece of regulation and create the incentives for the huge investments needed to make plastics packaging circular.”
According to Virginia Janssens, Managing Director, Plastics Europe, “The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation is one of the most important elements of the plastics transition enabling framework. So, although Plastics Europe welcomes a number of decisions taken by the European Parliament, we believe today’s Plenary vote was a missed opportunity to strengthen this critical piece of regulation and create the incentives for the huge investments needed to make plastics packaging circular.”
Creating the right market pull and regulatory conditions for circularity are essential for incentivising the EU plastics system to significantly increase its drive towards both mechanical and chemical recycling. These are vital for improving the quantity and quality of recycled plastics, reducing the reliance on fossil-based raw material input, and accelerating the circularity of all parts of the plastics packaging system.
Virginia Janssens states that, “It is unfortunate that the decision by the Environment committee to reduce the recycled content targets for contact-sensitive packaging has not been reversed in Plenary. This is a missed opportunity to use the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation to boost the development of the market for recycled plastic packaging in Europe.”
We are also disappointed that MEPs have failed to sufficiently clarify the role of bio-based plastics and recycled content as separate but complementary solutions that contribute to the plastics industry’s sustainability journey and have failed to mandate that packaging which we will redesign to make fully recyclable is sorted prior to incineration and landfill.
