We are deeply concerned by the potential reopening of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) as part of the upcoming Environmental Simplification Omnibus.
The PPWR is a cornerstone of the European Circular Economy and is a crucial step in establishing the necessary framework that enables truly reusable and recyclable packaging across the Single Market by 2030.
While the legislation had already been watered down in response to intense industry lobbying, it provides crucial measures to help tackle Europe’s ever-growing consumption of throwaway packaging by setting binding rules for prevention, reuse and redesign.
The Rethink Plastic Alliance is advocating for a CE Act that truly rises to the challenge and reflects the urgent need to reduce, reuse and recycle materials. Concerningly, the Call for Evidence suggests that the Commission’s main focus is on downstream measures. While we acknowledge and support the need to improve recycling in the EU, we are calling for a CE Act that accurately reflects the waste hierarchy and therefore also includes strong measures on waste prevention and reuse, while ensuring material loops are toxic-free.
Input from the Rethink Plastic alliance on the Commission’s initiative to simplify and streamline administrative requirements related to the environment in the areas of waste, products, and industrial emissions.
Input to the public consultation on the draft Implementing Decision laying down rules for recycled content in single-use plastic beverage bottles, including chemically-recycled content. The proposed Implementing Decision does not comply with the principle of proportionality and exceeds the scope of the implementing power granted by the Single Use Plastics Directive.
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.
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.
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.
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