ANALYSIS | REGULATION


Ambitious new EU rules for packaging and packaging waste


The EU’s revised Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation will place more pressure on the plastics packaging and recycling sectors. Silke Einschuetz at AMI Consulting considers the implications


Following many months of speculation, information leaks, and what has been described as a “watering down” of an initial draft it finally arrived in November – the EU’s proposal for a revised Packaging and Packaging Waste Regula- tion. (The proposal can be viewed on the European Commission’s website: https://environment.ec. europa.eu/publications/ proposal-packaging-and- packaging-waste_en.) Note the term ‘Regula- tion’ – the existing legisla- tion is in the form of a Directive. What is the difference? A Directive formulates a goal that member states must achieve, but the exact implementation is left to each individual member state. As could be observed with the Single Use Plastics Directive, this can poten- tially lead to different degrees of implementation and achievement of goals, creating the potential for competitive distortions. A Regulation, in contrast, is a binding legislative act, every element of which must be applied across the EU. The change thus emphasises the need for the


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beverage bottles (30% and 65%) and other types of packaging (35% and 65%). Targets will have to be


establishment of uniform rules in the common market which will enable econo- mies of scale for activities to be undertaken to fulfil the new requirements. In addition, the provisions of a Regulation apply directly to economic operators.


Needed change To describe the new Regula- tion in one word – it is very ambitious. But then that is what we need to be to make progress. I am pleasantly surprised by the overall balanced reception of the measures that will be challenging and sometimes costly to achieve and implement by the industry. Given that several of the more ambitious measures include opt-out clauses already, any watering down of the proposal should be avoided – change is almost always challenging but has


PLASTICS RECYCLING WORLD | January/February 2023


never been as necessary as today for industry to continue to operate successfully in a radically changed market environment that requires adaptation and change to achieve the goals of the EU’s Green Deal.


It has been pointed out


by The Economist, invest- ments are flowing into the US because of subsidies becoming available for green energy technologies and renewables schemes under President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Europe needs to stay competitive against this background. One core element of the


new Regulation are recycled content targets for 2030 and 2040 respectively. These apply to PET contact-sensi- tive packaging (30% and 50%), other contact-sensi- tive packaging (10% and 50%), single use plastic


met for each unit of plastic packaging, with recycled content from post-consumer plastic waste. While to be welcomed for its push to create much needed market demand for recyclates, success will depend on the availability of sufficient volumes of recyclates to incorporate into these packaging types. Especially where food contact materials are concerned, this is far from certain given the EU’s strict food contact rules incorpo- rated in EU Regulation 282/2008 on “recycled plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with foods”. Chemi- cal recycling is unlikely to be able to close the gap between demand and availability in the short and possibly medium term. This is considered by the provision, that targets could be temporarily amended through a delegated act when there are supply issues or when there are excessive prices for specific recyclates. However, Article 47


paragraph 9 of the draft Regulation (Rules on the calculation of the attainment of recycling targets) provides a potential indication of chemically recycled plastics to be counted towards the achievement of recycling targets, as long as opera-


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