New Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy Action Plan: no cir­cu­lar eco­nomy without bioeconomy

As to on-going and planned ini­ti­at­ives regard­ing plastics, not­ably with a focus on pack­aging, EUBP would, how­ever, prefer a more dif­fer­en­ti­ated approach from the Com­mis­sion. ​“While we cer­tainly sup­port meas­ures to reduce (over)packaging and pack­aging waste as well as the drive to design pack­aging for re-use and recyc­lab­il­ity, a mere focus on mech­an­ic­al recyc­ling and on intro­du­cing quotas for the use of recyc­lates is jump­ing to short”, says François de Bie. ​“This is par­tic­u­larly the case when it comes to food con­tact mater­i­als.” Accord­ing to EUBP, the announced estab­lish­ment of rules for the safe recyc­ling of plastic mater­i­als into food con­tact mater­i­als oth­er than PET will not solve the health and safety issues asso­ci­ated with the use of recyc­lates. This applies in par­tic­u­lar to the short to medi­um term. ​“There is a good reas­on why, today, recyc­lates oth­er than PET are not admit­ted as food con­tact mater­i­als, as, cur­rently, there is no way to guar­an­tee the elim­in­a­tion of poten­tially haz­ard­ous leg­acy mater­i­als. There­fore, we strongly encour­age the EC to sup­port the use of sus­tain­ably sourced bio-based vir­gin mater­i­al for pack­aging requir­ing food con­tact approv­al. This should be reflec­ted in, for example, the guid­ance on eco-mod­u­la­tion of EPR fees. In gen­er­al, recyc­ling of plastic pack­aging needs to be under­stood in line with the WFD Art. 3 as mech­an­ic­al, chem­ic­al or organ­ic recyc­ling.” The EC’s com­mit­ment to assess bio­de­grad­able and com­postable plastics in order to determ­ine which applic­a­tions may be bene­fi­cial to the envir­on­ment, is very much sup­por­ted by EUBP. ​“We are con­vinced that a thor­ough assess­ment of EN 13432 cer­ti­fied bio­de­grad­able and com­postable plastics pack­aging will even­tu­ally reach the con­clu­sion that there are quite a few applic­a­tions where com­posta­bil­ity makes per­fect sense”, says de Bie. Pack­aging, which is prone to be highly con­tam­in­ated with food waste, will not be mech­an­ic­ally recycled. Instead, in most cases, it will be incin­er­ated, or even worse, land­filled. ​“Com­postable bioplastics help divert organ­ic waste from land­fills. The rem­edy can only be to allow such pack­aging to be com­pos­ted togeth­er with the sep­ar­ately col­lec­ted biowaste. Com­post from sep­ar­ately col­lec­ted bio-waste is an extremely valu­able soil improver and nutri­ent sup­pli­er. It plays an import­ant role in a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy by clos­ing the organ­ic cycle. We there­fore wel­come the man­dat­ory sep­ar­ate biowaste col­lec­tion by 2023“, states François de Bie. The recently pub­lished action plan aims at accel­er­at­ing the trans­form­a­tion­al change required by the European Green Deal. ​“We see ourselves in a cru­cial role to help achiev­ing the deal and the nCEAP as one of its key deliv­er­ables. The bioplastics industry is look­ing for­ward and will­ing to provide strong sup­port”, con­cludes François de Bie. Source: EUBP, Press release, 13.03.2020