The EU regulation on plastic waste is coming

During the spring, the theme reached the Italian Parliamentwith the Combined Environment and Productive Activities Commissions who held a hearing on the impacts for the Italian supply chain. The ppwri.e. the proposal of Community regulation reforming the regulation of packaging and wasteis arousing great interest in the market, especially in the part that provides for the ban on disposable tableware for consumption in restaurants starting from 2030 and the introduction of reuse targets of 40-80% for take-away by 2040.

The need to change course

The premise is that, although the rates of recycling have increased inEUthe amount of packaging waste grows faster than recycling. In the last decade, the quantity of the former has increased by over 20% and should increase by a further 19% until 2030 in the absence of specific interventions. This has huge environmental consequences, including increased and inefficient use of resources, negative impact on the climate, littering the environment, excessive use of substances of concern in packaging, and significantly exacerbating waste management challenges. waste, including low quality recycling and excessive landfilling, incineration and export at end of life.

Italy European champion in recycling

Among the top five EU economies, Italy remains the leading country in the circular economy. In 2021, based on the latest available data, the circular economy of packaging has recovered 73.3% of the material placed on the market in Italy: 10 million and 550 thousand tons, well ahead of the target of 65% of total packaging recycling set by European regulations by 2025.

Taking as an example paper and cardboardalready in 2020 Italy reached and exceeded the threshold of 85%, which corresponds to the target set by theEuropean Union for 2030, as reported by the latest Comieco report.

The objectives of Brussels and the Italian position

The document prepared by EU Commission aims to prevent the generation of packaging waste, promote high-quality recycling and create a market for secondary raw materials, while facilitating consumer information and creating new business opportunities. The proposal will set sustainability requirements and restrictions for chemicals and harmonize criteria under extended producer responsibility schemes and requirements for labeling, marking And information.

In the proposed regulation, the two major contributors to the reduction of waste generation at EU level are the proposal to ban unnecessary packaging, such as certain forms of avoidable single-use packaging in the hotel, retail and restaurant sectors, and the obligation for companies to offer a certain percentage of their products to consumers in reusable or refillable packaging, for example for takeaway drinks and meals or deliveries related to e-commerce.

At this stage, discussions are underway at various levels on the contents of the regulation. Then it will be time to pull the strings with the approval of the definitive text.

In this regard, the Italian Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security has taken a position, at the urging of a large part of the industrial sector, highlighting the critical points and weak points of the proposal, in particular for the impact on the Italian system.

The reuse of packaging at the expense of recycling, without scientific and economic evidence, it would undermine a winning system. L’Italy it is in fact among the European countries where packaging recycling has the best results and costs the least. Our country hopes that the negotiation will consider the maintenance of the solutions that have made it possible to adopt virtuous packaging management models, guaranteeing respect for the environment, without compromising economic activities and jobs.

The report for the fast food sector

The consulting firm Kearney conducted a research on circularity in the fast food sector. The Report highlights several negative consequences of systems with reusable packaging. In particular, an increase in the volumes of plastic packaging waste. Amount of plastic packaging waste growing up to 4 times for dine-in restaurants and up to 16 times for take-out. From this, it follows a sharp increase in greenhouse gas emissions: 50% increase for restaurants and 260% for takeaways. Water usage for a reusable system with 100 reuses could be 267% higher than a single-use paper model. Furthermore, since reusable products have to be washed, Europe would consume up to 4 billion liters more water every year.

According to Kearney reportsa mix of solutions is needed to enable Europe to circularitytherefore through a personalized and multi-solution approach that balances economic, environmental and consumption results.