Prioritising the most environmentally-friendly ways of dealing with waste, starting with prevention and reuse, should be central to Europe’s new packaging law, lawmakers working on the file told EURACTIV.
The EU’s waste framework directive defines a ‘hierarchy’ for waste management, with prevention and reuse as the most preferred options, followed by recycling, energy recovery, and disposal as a last resort.
As the EU debates its new packaging and packaging waste regulation (PPWR), left-wing lawmakers are determined to prioritise the measures at the top of the hierarchy, which are the most environmentally friendly.
“Packaging waste is on the increase and it will continue to grow substantially unless we significantly reduce how much of it is produced in the first place,” said Grace O’Sullivan, an Irish MEP, working on the PPWR on behalf of the Greens in the European Parliament.
“That means prioritising upstream solutions, rather than trying to solve the problem by only looking at downstream measures,” she added.
The European Commission’s proposal, tabled in November last year, offers “some good levers” for waste prevention with provisions to increase reuse and refill, bans on avoidable single-use packaging and design criteria to avoid superfluous packaging, said Delara Burkhardt, the lawmaker working on the file for the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) group.
But while she and O’Sullivan support the proposal, both told EURACTIV it needs to be more ambitious.
“Overall, the Commission’s proposal is a good starting point but the measures could and should be strengthened further if we are serious about tackling the mountains of packaging waste that we produce every day,” O’Sullivan said.
EURACTIV contacted the other lawmakers working on the packaging law, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
