Dear Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy Jessika Roswall,
We, the undersigned organisations, urge you to include the plastics and polymer sector in the forthcoming first Working Plan under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). Plastic in products has an outsized impact on human health and the environment and was included in the JRC’s shortlist for intermediate products. Yet the final text of the ESPR does not list plastics and polymers as one of the suggested sectors for intermediate product priorities.
Rethink Plastic’s position on the EU’s regulation to prevent pellet loss: To effectively reduce the environmental and economic burden of pellet loss, a comprehensive supply chain approach is essential to implement, with robust and binding measures for all operators at every stage of the supply chain, ensuring that those responsible for pollution are held accountable rather than leaving EU public authorities and citizens to pay. Such binding prevention steps will protect public health and ecosystems while cutting long-term costs for European communities by curbing the ongoing effects of microplastic pollution.
With just one month until the EU elections, we appeal to you to make a top political priority of the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution given the devastating impacts and growing intensity and frequency of climate-related events for ecosystems, health, economies, social justice and cohesion.
In line with our letter sent to Commissioners on 30 November 2023 regarding substances of concern in the Ecodesign for Sustainable Product Regulation (ESPR)1, we are now calling on negotiators to maintain the ambition of the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS) within the PPWR.
In particular, we ask the negotiators to:
- Introduce restrictions in the cases of significant risks to human health or the environment with wording aligned with the ESPR, and
- Introduce bans on PFAS and BPA in packaging.
After yet another container loss, the shores of Galicia, Asturias and Cantabria
(Spain), along the Atlantic coast, are under siege from a relentless tide of
microplastics. Those small particles washing ashore are plastic pellets, which are
the raw material used to manufacture all plastic items.
We, the signatories of this letter (civil society organisations and reuse businesses across Europe), are concerned that misinformation and intense lobbying from the single-use packaging industry and the take-away sector are undermining the need for reuse as a driver for waste prevention, resource
conservation and climate protection in the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR).
This regulation represents a critical opportunity for the much-needed transition towards more circular
packaging systems at a time where it is crucial to tackle emissions, pollution and resource use in all
sectors. The focus of decision-makers should remain firmly on the key objective of the PPWR,
which is reducing packaging waste and improving the environmental performance of this increasingly wasteful sector.
