EuRIC welcomes European plastics producers’ call

As consistently stressed by EuRIC, European recyclers strongly support mandatory and quantitative recycled content targets for packaging production as an efficient policy instrument to steer the demand for high-quality recycled materials and invest throughout the packaging value chain – from design to end-of-life collection and recycling.

For Paul Mayhew, President of EuRIC Plastics Recycling Branch, “this call made from the voice of plastics manufacturers is a major step forward towards more circularity in the field of packaging and a recognition that binding recycled content targets in EU legislation are a powerful market signal to scale-up circular value chains. It has proved to be an extremely efficient tool for beverage bottles in pulling the demand for food-grade rPET and de-correlating prices from the ever-fluctuating oil market. Extending such an obligation to plastic packaging at large will give the long-term certainty the packaging value chain needs to scale-up and be in a position to supply high-quality recycled polymers”, he added.

With substantial room to improve the uptake of raw materials from recycling (RMR) in a number of plastic packaging types, the recycling industry looks forward cooperating with the plastics industry to meet such a target by 2030.

Emmanuel Katrakis, Secretary General of EuRIC, stressed that “transitioning towards a circular economy is key to achieve climate-neutrality. Binding recycled content targets for plastics and other materials will play a key role in achieving that goal. On top of push-and-pull measures, a comprehensive policy framework that gives an edge to circular value chains in the EU and globally is absolutely essential”, he concluded.