Legitimising ‘chemical recycling’ will allow manufacturers to make unsubstantiated claims about how much recycled content their products actually contain, warns the environmental network Zero Waste Europe (ZWE).
The European Commission’s implementing decision on the Single-Use Plastic Directive (SUPD), risks undermining the integrity of the definition of recycled content, due to the recognition of recovery technologies as recycling. The environmental network stresses that this decision sets a dangerous precedent that will most likely impact other key pieces of legislation such as the Packaging, Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), and the End-of-Life Vehicles Regulation (ELVR).
Lauriane Veillard, Chemical Recycling and Plastic-to-Fuels Policy Officer states: “While we appreciate the reduction of the proposal’s scope to PET bottles, we do not support rushing to adopt another accounting method, especially when this system will be subject to further discussions as part of the PPWR, which goes against the regulatory certainty.”
Zero Waste Europe strongly opposes the inclusion of a mass balance approach for accounting recycled content based on the ‘fuel-use exempt’ allocation rules, which would allow companies to claim and market products as made from recycled materials regardless of their true content. These rules are worsened by the ‘dual-use output’ concept, which grants even more flexibility in how to attribute the ‘recycled content’.
Lauriane Veillard, Chemical Recycling and Plastic-to-Fuels Policy Officer states: “With the adoption of these allocation rules, decision-makers are legitimising greenwashing and rewarding non-transparent practices at a moment when we need more traceability to transition safely towards a circular economy. This approach will neither increase the use of recycled content nor improve circularity; only proportional allocation can deliver accordingly.“
Zero Waste Europe urges the European Commission to develop a stronger methodology as part of the Packaging, Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), which focuses on more efficient technologies, such as mechanical recycling, that have less-energy intensive processes, and a more transparent accounting system.
Source: Zero Waste Europe
