Recyclers Call for a Waste Shipment Regulation that Promotes Plastics Circularity in Europe
In view of starting trialogue negotiations on the Waste Shipment Regulation, the European Recycling Industries’ Confederation (EuRIC) recalls main messages for achieving coherence between the Waste Shipment Regulation (WSR) and the future Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) for facilitating plastics circularity and plastics free trade within the EU, as outlined in EuRIC’s position paper.
Achieving ambitious mandatory recycled content targets for plastic packaging under the PPWR requires a functioning and defragmented European plastics recycling market. Therefore, EuRIC calls for avoiding measures that have the exact opposite effect when finding a common position in the trialogue. Removing waste entries EU3011 and EU48 would increase the administrative burden by requiring unnecessary notifications for many plastic waste shipments and jeopardise the competitiveness of the EU recycling industry. When competing with virgin raw materials, a level playing field for recycled plastics also requires minimising the cost of notifications within the EU. In addition, a mandatory recycled content target for all plastics will be essential to ensure investment stability and planning certainty for the industry.
Moreover, the establishment of EU harmonised end-of-waste criteria is crucial for better reintroduction of high-quality recycled products (e.g., pellets, powders and flakes) into new products and will be key to the development of the European recycling industry.
Source: EuRIC (Brussels, May 26, 2023)
