PETnews 6 NEWS PETplanet Insider Vol. 23 No. 05/22 www.petpla.net Europe’s non-alcoholic beverage industry calls for mechanisms to accelerate circular economy Europe’s non-alcoholic beverage industry, represented by the European Fruit Juice Association (AIJN), Natural Mineral Waters Europe (NMWE) and Unesda Soft Drinks Europe, together with leading NGOs, including Changing Markets Foundation and Zero Waste Europe, are calling on EU decisionmakers to create the right enabl ing policy framework to help accelerate the transition to a circular economy in Europe. These organisations underline the need to ensure resource-efficient waste management systems to enable closed-loop recycling. They also call for a “priority access”, or a similar mechanism that guarantees a “right of first refusal” to beverage producers to facilitate their fair access to the food-grade recycled materials coming from the products they placed on the market and which were successfully collected. The EU Circular Economy Action Plan has the ambition of accelerating the transition to a circular economy. This will require significant changes in the way recycled materials are collected, reused, recycled and incorporated, the statement says. Achieving fully closed and resource-efficient waste management systems for all materials should be the primary objective. The more closed-loop a system is, the more resource efficient it will be by delivering quality recycled materials which can be re-used multiple times for the same application. Therefore, for each sector, the ultimate goal should be to achieve closed-loop recycling, the organisations state and are confident that this can be achieved with the right enabling policy framework. The organisations suggest that the main policy conditions that should be created are: mandatory minimum requirements for Deposit Refund Schemes (DRS) to facilitate the roll-out of efficient waste collection schemes and the achievement of the EU 90% separate collection target; a mechanism that grants beverage producers fair and necessary access to the recycled materials deriving from the beverage containers they put on the market and which were successfully collected. This way, these materials can be used again as recycled content for new beverage packaging. This legal mechanism to guarantee a ‘’right of first refusal’’ to beverage producers will enable them to comply with the mandatory EU targets for the incorporation of rPET and ideally meet their more ambitious voluntary pledges (e.g. Unesda’s Circular Packaging Vision of achieving 50% rPET in 2025 and 100% in 2030 and NMWE’s commitments to achieving 50% rPET by 2030) towards circular packaging. a harmonised definition of high-quality recycling and, based on this definition, a ranking of recyclability classes. In such ranking, the highest position (priority) should be attributed to packaging that does not pose any recyclability issues and the recycled material can feed a closed-loop scheme and allow further recyclability of the same quality (for example, food-contact) when reaching their end-of-life. Nicholas Hodac, Director General of Unesda Soft Drinks Europe, adds: “Recent reports have illustrated that postconsumer recycled PET from beverage bottles is increasingly used by non-food sectors (textiles, automotive, etc.) to boost their environmental sustainability credentials. […] ‘Breaking the loop’ (a loss from the circular bottle stream) goes against the very principle of circularity. In addition, it also creates an unfair situation because food and drink producers are obliged to comply with strict EU health and safety requirements for food contact materials.’’ A priority of upcoming EU legislation should be, according to the organisations, to look beyond beverage containers and enable the creation of closed loops for all products and packaging applications. Joan Marc Simon, Executive Director of Zero Waste Europe, says: “It is time to raise EU ambitions and define highquality recycling. Introducing such a definition in the EU legislation will incentivise investments in recycling infrastructure and foster resource efficiency across the whole production of products and packaging materials.’’ www.unesda.eu New figures for installed plastics recycling capacities reveal a 13% growth The total installed plastics recycling capacity in 2020 in EU27+3 grew by 1.1 mt compared to the previous year. The new figures show that the plastics recycling industry remains resilient while continuing its path towards making plastics genuinely circular. The growth in the sector, despite the difficulties brought on by the pandemic, was possible thanks to the booming demand driven, among others, by the new legislative targets. The dataset shows that PET, flexible PO and rigid HDPE & PP retain the biggest share of the overall plastics recycling capacity, representing nearly 80%. Moreover, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK and France have the highest capacities for plastic waste recycling. Rigid HDPE & PP registered the highest increase in recycling capacities (a rate of over 20%), while for flexible PO it grew by roughly 10%. Fast-paced technological developments in collection, sorting and recycling were among the factors that facilitated these developments. With €7.7 billion in turnover and a total of 9.6 million tonnes of installed recycling capacity, European recyclers are an essential part of the puzzle in addressing plastic waste and play a significant role in contributing towards a carbon-neutral Europe. Comprehensive legislative support would unlock additional collection and high-quality sorting tonnages while incentivising investments in recycling technologies & infrastructures leading to a tripling of plastics recycling capacities by 2030. www.plasticsrecyclers.eu
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