The changing policy and legislative environment in the EU : a work of expertise, perseverance and vigilance

AUTHOR : Mike JEFFERSON, Director, European Association of Plastics Recycling and Recovery Organisations (EPRO)

Plastics and their environmental management are the subject of all the attention of political authorities, at the United Nations as much as in the European Union. The regulatory work is already very advanced with regard to packaging, from its design to its use, from its recyclability to its reuse. So far, agricultural plastics have benefited from the work done by national collection schemes, but their expertise and perseverance should not prevent them from sharpening their vigilance if they want to assert their success, perpetuate the strategic use of agricultural plastics and improve their end-of-life management.

Waste management in the European Union (EU) has for several decades been driven by policy and legislation. This has particularly been the case for plastics where its use and end of life management has had much public and political attention over the last decade and this continues to be the case, for example with the UNEP¹ led work to develop a legally binding instrument on plastics pollution.

Step by step

This political attention has in turn led to a focus on plastics in policymaking in the European Commission. In 2015 the EU Action Plan for a Circular Economy was released which highlighted plastics as a priority area.  This policy action plan introduced many of the key topics that are now working their way through into the legislation, such as the importance of quality in recycled materials, design for recycling, and the need to encourage recycled content.  This focus on plastics was then built on in the European Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy, released in 2018. This added more specific aims and objectives, such as that all packaging placed on the market by 2030 should be recyclable, and also introduced an objective of using 10 Million Tonnes of recycled content in EU plastic products. This recycled content target was then picked up by the Circular Plastics Alliance, which now has close to 330 signatories and in which EPRO² and APE³ Europe are actively involved. Finally, there was the Circular Economy Action Plan in 2020, that explored the idea of high-quality recycling and how and where biodegradable and compostable plastics might be used. Recycled content also remained a key topic.

Recycling at the heart of concerns

Packaging has always been a legislative focus in the EU due to the high volumes of packaging waste generated each year. The Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive was adopted nearly 30 years ago now, in 1994, and has been amended several times over the years.  It is currently undergoing a major revision and is passing through the EU legislative process.  A draft proposal was published by the European Commission at the end of November 2022, which picks up on many of the key policy objectives for plastics set out over the past decade. Design for recycling is a core focus with all packaging required to be recyclable by the start of 2030 and by 2035 it must also be recyclable at scale, put simply it must be widely recycled. There are also ambitious recycled content targets for 2030 and 2040 for packaging, with the later target being particularly high at between 50-65%, depending on the packaging type, as currently drafted. In addition, there are a wide range of reuse targets focusing, in particular, on the HORECA sector⁴ and transport packaging. Waste prevention targets also feature as well as specific restrictions on packaging use.