EU Packaging Waste Recycling Draft Sets 2030 Targets and 2025 Landfill Ban

Editor’s note: As consumption levels continue to climb, packaging waste management has become a major public issue. Recycling is often viewed as one way to improve the situation, yet practical results remain limited. To accelerate the circular economy model and raise the utilization rate of renewable resources, the European Commission has released a draft legislative act that includes a landfill ban on renewable waste.

The draft is tied to the Commission’s push to fully realize the circular economy model as soon as possible and to improve the utilization rate of renewable resources. The landfill ban on renewable waste is one of its key elements.

Under the draft, by 2030 EU member states would need to reach a 70% recycling rate for municipal plastic waste and an 80% recycling rate for packaging waste. The landfill ban on renewable waste would formally take effect in 2025. The draft also calls for reducing marine litter.

The European Commission believes the circular economy is not only feasible for Europe as a whole but can also deliver real results. However, reaching that goal requires laws and rules as a foundation. For this reason, the introduction of the relevant act is considered necessary.

Janez Potonik, Director-General of the European Commission, said that unlike the extensive economic development model of the 19th century, today’s 21st-century society has tens of thousands of emerging middle-class people, and its markets form an interconnected whole. If Europe is to stay competitive, he said, it must make full use of existing resources instead of simply sending waste to landfill.

The European plastics industry association has expressed strong support for the European Commission’s proposed landfill ban on renewable waste. Its chairman, Karl-H. Foerster, said all kinds of waste, especially plastic waste, is merely a valuable resource in the wrong place. It should not end up only in landfill or incineration; instead, its value should be fully realized through reuse.

Foerster, however, considers the European Commission’s timetable somewhat conservative. He stressed that some EU member states have already achieved good results in plastic recycling, and other countries can learn from that valuable successful experience while taking their own national conditions into account. Therefore, the goal of zero landfilling of plastic waste can be achieved a full five years earlier.

It is reported that the landfill ban on renewable waste and the related draft will be submitted by the European Commission to the European Parliament. All members of parliament will then discuss whether to approve it.

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-361783.html