Communicator

Beatriz Santos | 22/01/2025 | Sustainable Plastics

The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) saw publication in the Official Journal of the European Union on Jan. 22, 2025.

The legislation will officially come into force on Feb. 11, 2025. EU regulations become binding upon publication on the Official Journal. All member states are required to comply with the regulation.

The PPWR will apply from August 12, 2026, 18 months after the regulation comes into force.

The European Parliament approved the final PPWR text in November 2024. The document is available in all EU languages.

The EU Parliament had approved a preliminary version of the legislation on April 24, 2024, with 476 votes in favour, 129 against, and 24 abstentions. That version of the text only included a version in English and hadn’t undergone the required legal-linguistic review.

The PPWR includes packaging reduction targets (5% by 2030, 10% by 2035 and 15% by 2040) and require EU countries to reduce, in particular, the amount of plastic packaging waste.

Under the new rules, all packaging, except for lightweight wood, cork, textile, rubber, ceramic, porcelain and wax, will have to be recyclable by fulfilling strict criteria. It introduces, as of 2030, a recyclability performance grade scale from A to C stating the extent to which packaging is considered recyclable, being 95% grade A, 80% grade B, and 70% grade C. 

The legislation includes provisions on recycling targets of 50% for plastic packaging by 2025 and 55% by 2030 and foresees recycled content targets for all types of plastic packaging, with the most demanding ones set for 2040 – including 65% recycled content for SUP beverage bottles, 50% for PET contact-sensitive packaging, and 65% for other packaging.

By 2029, 90% of single use plastic and metal beverage containers up to three litres will have to be collected separately, via deposit-return systems or other solutions that ensure the collection target is met.

Throughout the two long years after the first draft PPWR was introduced, the text has generated a lot of controversy. Some industry groups claim the legislation lacks ‘material neutrality’ by singling-out plastics, whilst others argue that secondary legislation will be required to make it work.


#recycling  #plasticrecycling  #plasticwaste  #plasticpackaging #sustainability 

The spinoff from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands said in a statement that ‘achieving a positive cash flow from its advanced polyester recycling technology will take too long’, sustainable Plastics reports.

Ioniqa has been operating a demonstration facility at Brightlands Chemelot Campus in Geleen, the Netherlands , since summer 2019. The demo plant, with a capacity of 10,000 tonnes a year, produces recycled PET for food-contact applications.

This January, the company received funding from Infinity Recycling’s Circular Plastics Fund to help scale up and bring its technology to market, including broadening its feedstock to include polyester fibres.

However, ten months in, Ioniqa said large-scale deployment of its PET depolymerisation technology has proven ‘economically unfeasible’ under current market conditions and the company’s current set-up.

It cited low cost of virgin plastics, a plastics recycling chain still in development, and too-far-out-into-the future implementation of recycling quotas mandates as factors for its poor financial position.

With its strategic licencing partner Koch Technology Solutions, a UK-based  technology licensing business with roots in DuPont, the partners expected to sell licences will on an estimated 50,000-plus tonnes scale...

The company’s Denua technology is a proprietary glycolysis process that depolymerises all types and colours of PET waste into its original monomers. Its feedstock is mostly based on low-end PET.

As an investor, if you had asked portfolio planning PLUS, we would have told you about the financial risk by developing an integrated economic model on our PAAS system.

#chemicalrecycling  #plasticrecycling  #pet  #depolymerisation 

The seventh extension of the Italian Plastic Tax until July 2026 has been announced.

The Plastic Tax is a tax with a fixed value of 0.45 € that producers, importers and consumers should pay for each kilo of plastic products sold or purchased.

The 2020 budget law of the Giallorossi Conte government had introduced the Plastic Tax, i.e. the tax on the consumption of single-use plastic products, The tax, designed to target the use of polluting single-use plastics, immediately proved to be very complicated to apply, and had sparked a revolt among companies in the affected sector.

The 2020 relaunch decree, in the midst of the Covid period, had postponed the tax to 1 January 2021. Then the 2021 budget law had postponed the plastic tax to 1 July 2021. The Sostegni bis decree of May 2021 had brought the plastic tax back to 1 January 2022. Then there were the two budget laws for 2022 and 2023 which postponed the tax by one year, that is, for the last, until 1 January 2024. With the 2024 budget, after many discussions on the possible abolition of the tax, the last postponement arrived until July 2024, the one currently in force.

The newest change is contained in the government's stamped amendment to the Superbonus Law Decree, under discussion in the Senate. Here the extension appears for the plastic tax: it is to come into force from 1 July 2024 to 1 July 2026.

Source: Marini di Andrea, 11^th May 2024, Il Sole 24 ORE,

#plastictax  #plasticwaste  #plasticrecycling