PlasticsEurope’s reaction to Europe’s Plastics Strategy
PlasticsEurope welcomes the publication by the European Commission of “A European Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy”. PlasticsEurope supports the creation of a joint vision for a truly circular and resource efficient Europe, the promotion of actions aimed at tackling plastics leakage into the environment, increasing recycling and re-use and boosting innovation. The Strategy calls for the adoption of harmonised rules to ensure that by 2030 all plastic packaging placed on the EU market can be reused, recycled and are not littered.
“We, the European plastics manufacturers, are committed to ensure high rates of reuse and recycling with the ambition to reach 60% for plastic packaging by 2030. This will help achieve our goal of 100% reuse, recycling and recovery of all plastics packaging at European level by 2040”, said Karl-H. Foerster, Executive Director of PlasticsEurope.
In order to support the ambitious recycling goals, the Strategy for Plastics stresses the need to discourage the landfilling of plastics waste and recognises that effective waste management systems are key to avoid littering and ensure that collected waste finds its way to proper treatment.
In this context, PlasticsEurope is thrilled to announce the publication of its “Plastics 2030 – Voluntary Commitment”, which contains a set of ambitious targets and initiatives representing the plastics industry contribution to achieve a fully circular and resource efficient Europe. This voluntary commitment focuses on (1) increasing re-use and recycling (with the ambition to reach 60% for plastics packaging by 2030), (2) preventing plastics leakage into the environment, and (3) accelerating resource efficiency.
By mid-2018, PlasticsEurope will set up concrete action plans and time-based performance indicators which will be used to evaluate the achievement of these objectives. The results will be monitored by an independent committee, made of representatives of academia, the European Commission, the European Parliament, civil society and PlasticsEurope. Also, from 2019, an annual progress report will be published.
