We urge the European Commission to ensure that the revised strategy actively supports a truly circular, regenerative, and ecologically sound bioeconomy. This includes ensuring ambitious alignment with European and global objectives on packaging, ecodesign for sustainable products, and nature restoration. In particular, this new strategy must recognise the risks of unchecked expansion of bio-based material production, addressing the full lifecycle impacts of bio-based plastics and paper, and prioritising resource sufficiency, ecological resilience, and social equity over simplistic assumptions of renewability or carbon neutrality.
Scrutinising Scientific Standards
A Scientific Assessment of the JRC Study on European Sustainability Criteria for Plastics Recycling Technologies
The aim of this report is to allow for a better understanding of the full environmental impacts of different plastic recycling technologies.
Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation Implementation: A roadmap for national & local governments to slash record levels of waste
Despite some shortcomings, exemptions and loopholes, the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation establishes a number of key requirements, notably on waste prevention, reuse and recyclability. It also provides many tools that governments at the national, regional and local levels can leverage to reduce packaging waste.
Evaluation of the Single-Use Plastics Directive
At Rethink Plastic, we have carried out our own evaluation of the SUP Directive with the contribution of the Break Free From Plastic Network, building on the previous transposition and implementation assessments published by the Rethink Plastic alliance to monitor developments since 2019, as well as recent assessments from our members on the state of play in their respective countries. We will also take this opportunity to highlight the positive impact that the SUP Directive has had, both in raising general awareness about single-use plastic pollution and promoting a preventative approach to the global plastic pollution crisis, as opposed to relying on a clean-up and recycling-focused mitigation approach.
A holistic plastic strategy: Addressing polymers and plastics under the ESPR
Plastics and polymers should be included as an intermediate product in the first working plan
under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (foreseen for early 2025). By prioritising
plastics and polymers in the first ESPR working plan, the EU will take a major step in addressing
the plastic pollution crisis, working to minimise the environmental footprint of plastic and polymer
production. This paper showcases the need to do that and shed lights on the missing pieces of the
puzzle and limitation of current methodology that look into polymer production.
PVC Problem Very Clear.
Commonly used plastics pose many threats to human health and the environment, making them one of the most pressing environmental issues of our time. But in the landscape of the various plastics that surround us, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) stands out. Not only is it found everywhere, from home furnishings to children’s toys and medical supplies, contributing to widespread, irreversible plastic pollution, but it is also associated with grave toxic effects along its whole life cycle – from production to disposal.
Functionalisation of Paper and Cardboard. How to make Paper/Cardboard impervious for packaging?
Paper and cardboard require functionalisation so that they can be used in contact with food. Functionalisation may include adding a barrier function to water, grease, gases, etc. This is mainly achieved through the use of plastic, i.e. the combination of polymer(s) + additive(s). Paper and cardboard food packaging are therefore not free from plastic. As such, most paper and cardboard packaging remain at the same level as “single-use plastics”, as defined in the European Directive on Single-Use Plastics.
Big tobacco: poisoning (long-due) extended producer responsibility schemes
Single Use Plastics Directive Implementation Assessment Report February 2024 Focus on Extended Producer Responsibility schemes on tobacco-related products
Cigarette buts are the most commonly found litter worldwide in clean-up activities with over 4.5
trillion estimated to be discarded annually. Cigarette butts are found in almost all environments:
they are found massively along roadways, along waterways, on the beach but also in parks and
playgrounds, and in cities. As our citizen science projects prove, cigarettes have constantly been
the number one litter item picked up on European beaches, in city streets or along water bodies
during the Surfrider Europe’s Ocean Initiatives: 2,409,580 cigarette butts were collected in 2022
(1). In 2022, cigarette butts were collected in 89% of our operations and there were 1072
cigarette butts counted on average at each clean-up organised that year. And in every country
where Ocean Initiatives took place, cigarette butts were found. At global level, of the 137 million
cigarette butts discarded onto the ground every day, 40% end up in the oceans.