PETpla.net Insider 05 / 2016

MATERIAL / RECYCLING 9 PET planet insider Vol. 17 No. 05/16 www.petpla.net the environment. More specifically, the rate of return of plastics is to rise from its current level of about 35%, to 55% in 2015. That is the theory. From the audience the questions came thick and fast: how exactly does the EU imagine the process of recy- cling plastics. The recycling industry is keen to invest the money, but as long as they are not clear on how to recycle, they are not going to throw money away. Eric Liegeois had no concrete answers to this. He admitted that so far implementation guidelines are missing and are not in sight but are going to come. He pointed to the national committees. This begs the question how the proportion of recy- cled material is to rise without invest- ment into recycling. Elfriede Hell from Starlinger recy- cling technology pointed out how badly things can go wrong and partic- ularly how long it can go on for, in her presentation “Implementing the food contact plastics recycling regulation in practice“. She clearly summarised the draft law that has been ongoing since 2008 on the demands of bottle to bottle (b to b) recycling. She tried to show the obstacles which lie behind the politically motivated requirement that only up to 5% of non-food bot- tles can be included in the recycling stream for the b to b. The recycling plants do technologically manage to generate food contact material from all PET bottles. She also showed how cumbersome the Compliance Monitor- ing Summery Sheet (CMSS) is which the EU requires, and that there still isn’t a final EU guideline for the imple- mentation of the ordinance (audits) and therefore, as described above, the cat would seem to be chasing its tail. No guidelines, no investments, PET recycling stagnates. By their actions, the EU Commission has achieved the exact opposite of what it actually intended. And the great thing is, the PET industry recycles anyway. The conference was originally planned to take place in November 2015, but – due to the security situ- ation in Brussels – had to be post- poned to early 2016. The next Petcore Europe conference will be held in Brussels in February 2017. www.petcore-europe.org This is how the EU imagines recycling in the coming years. All of this is to be included in the Compliance Monitoring Summery Sheet (CMSS) by Elfriede Hell, Starlinger. Patrick Peuch, Executive Director of Petcore Europe. Eva Schneider, Communications Officer of Petcore Europe.