The European Commission is preparing to unveil new legislation which for the first time envisages measures to limit packaging size as well as the amount of “empty space” in boxes shipped around Europe by online retailers.
The environmental impact of e-commerce has attracted scrutiny from EU policymakers concerned about the amount of packaging waste generated from growing online sales.
Brussels will seek to address this as part of a revision of its packaging and packaging waste directive, due on 30 November.
E-commerce in Europe grew by 13% to €718 billion in 2021, according to industry figures, confirming the sharp rise seen the year before during the COVID-19 pandemic when brick-and-mortar shops were forced to shut down for safety reasons.
But despite an overall trend towards light-weighting, the amount of packaging waste generated over the last decades has kept increasing, the European Commission said in a preliminary cost-benefit analysis of the EU’s packaging waste legislation.
“The growth trend has been accentuated by new consumption habits” such as “on-the-go consumption, increased online sales and home deliveries,” the EU executive says in a draft of its new packaging law, seen by EURACTIV.
Reducing ‘empty space’
One key aspect of the EU’s draft new regulation is to ensure “packaging minimisation” and the reduction of “empty space” which are often filled by polystyrene, air cushions, paper cuttings, or bubble wraps.
For e-commerce specifically, retailers should ensure that “the empty space ratio is maximum 40%,” according to the draft, which is not final yet and could still change before it is unveiled on 30 November.
In addition, “packaging with double walls, false bottoms and other means to create the impression of increased product volume, or superfluous packaging not fulfilling a packaging function … shall not be placed on the market,” reads the draft regulation.
Yet, the packaging industry feels the contribution of e-commerce to Europe’s waste problem tends to be exaggerated by policymakers because it is more visible to the end consumer.
The European Federation of Corrugated Board Manufacturers (FEFCO), a trade association, believes this impression was reinforced during the pandemic when people massively turned to online sales when shops were forced to shut down.
Most of the time, waste packaging is handled by retail stores and supermarkets who compress the material in bales and stockpile it on site before it is collected by trucks for recycling.
But because of the pandemic, consumers started receiving the packaging at home and had to recycle it themselves. “As a consequence, the packaging flow is diverted from retailers to the end-consumers who then need to put end-of-life packaging to recycling,” said Eleni Despotou, secretary general of FEFCO.
In reality, e-commerce in Europe represents only “around 7% of the corrugated market,” Despotou told EURACTIV, whereas the vast majority is used for bulk shipments that never reach the end consumer.
Source : Euractiv
