Following the vote on the draft Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) at the European Parliament's plenary session last week, the international alliance Rethink Plastic and the Zero Waste Europe (ZWE) network are hoping that the Council of the EU will ensure that a high level of ambition is maintained in the final legislation. According to Rethink Plastic, the EU Parliament allowed itself "to be intimidated by unprecedented lobbying" and to be influenced by "false claims" and "scaremongering". The deleted provisions and exemptions adopted in the plenary vote last Wednesday would render the Regulation's reuse targets "virtually ineffective" and send "a massively negative signal to the nascent reuse sector and circular economy frontrunners", the environmental organisation commented.
Sergio Baffoni, Senior Paper Packaging Campaigner at the Environmental Paper Network, a member organisation of Rethink Plastics, said, "The outcome goes beyond outrageous: all meaningful restrictions were removed. The very few that remain will actually increase paper packaging, as they are only aimed at curtailing plastic. This spells disaster for forests not only in Europe but all over the world." He argued that the European Parliament's text meant the "grotesque paper packaging demand" would continue to grow. "It's utterly unsustainable," Mr Baffoni said....
