A group of 51 environmental groups, associations and companies have expressed their support for the European Commission's planned EU Packaging Regulation. In a letter sent to the Environment Commissioner, Virginijus Sinkevičius, and Internal Market Commissioner, Thierry Breton, the associations give an especially warm welcome to measures related to upper levels of the waste hierarchy in the current draft proposal, such as binding targets for packaging waste prevention and packaging reuse.
However, the European Commission's working draft leaked in October is not ambitious enough, in the signatories’ opinion. They urge the Commission to put forward a “bold proposal to establish a new model of sustainable consumption in member states, where the prevention of packaging waste and a stable reuse economy help us reach a clean and liveable world for generations to come”.
According to the letter, one thing must be clear in the upcoming revision of the EU Packaging Directive: “The time for measures that only take effect in the future and merely allow for a very slow transformation is over if the EU wants to halve CO2 emissions until 2030.”...
