Why companies are ranting against Brussels on the pro-reuse regulation (and pro-Germany…)
Confindustria accuses the EU regulation on packaging of promoting German-style reuse, penalizing the Italian recycling chain (including bioplastics and Conai). All the details
Beyond the "spirit", there is nothing about the proposal for a European regulation on packaging that Confindustria, the association of Italian companies chaired by Carlo Bonomi, likes. During the hearing before the Environment and Productive Activities commissions of the Chamber, the director of the confederation, Francesca Mariotti (in the photo), said that the provision, if approved as it is, "is likely to damage an entire system of excellence, with serious and transversal impacts on the entire Italian industrial system", as well as "having a heavy impact also on food safety and people's health".
WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT
The European Commission intends to reduce the amount of packaging waste produced within the Union to promote the circularity of the economy and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, with a view to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
The packaging sector is one of the "main users of virgin materials" at EU level, argues Brussels, because it absorbs 40 percent of plastic and 50 percent of paper and accounts for 36 percent of municipal solid waste. If nothing is done, the European Union "would record a further 19 percent increase in packaging waste by 2030, and an even 46 percent increase in plastic packaging waste."
RECYCLING VERSUS REUSE
The proposal aims to ban single-use packaging in many applications, such as disposable plates and cutlery, sugar sachets or soap and shampoo bottles. So far, everyone agrees (more or less). The clashes focus on the next step, or rather on the methodology to be preferred to reduce the environmental impact of packaging: on the one hand there is recycling, i.e. the recovery of waste and its transformation into new products; on the other there is reuse, or the reuse of an asset that does not become waste.
The regulation is criticized by industrial associations – such as the Italian Confindustria, in fact – because it is accused of favoring reuse over recycling, consequently damaging all those companies that have made large investments in recovery plants for raw materials that have reached the end of their life. .
HOW IMPORTANT RECYCLING IS FOR ITALY
In Italy, according to a report by the Foundation for Sustainable Development published in 2022, the waste recycling rate is 72 percent, twenty points above the European one. With regard to packaging waste alone, the rate is 73.3 per cent, higher than both the European target for 2025 (65 per cent) and the one for 2030 (70 per cent).
The waste treatment sector has over 235,000 employees and creates an added value of 10.5 billion euros.
CONFINDUSTRIA'S CRITICISM OF THE EU PACKAGING REGULATION (AND THE REUSE SYSTEM)
In the hearing before the Chamber, the director of Confindustria, Francesca Mariotti, accused the proposed European regulation of violating the principle of technological neutrality: both because she prefers one solution (reuse) over another (recycling) instead of limiting set goals, both because it "has a prejudicial attitude" against compostable bioplastics, of which there is an important production in Italy. Countries such as Sweden and Finland , where the paper industry is strong due to the forests, are instead spending money to defend paper.
According to Mariotti, the regulation represents "an unjustified change of course by the Commission with respect to the current framework on waste and packaging waste which up to now has never imposed on the member states a single solution to pursue the objectives of environmental nature set by the EU legislator". And he argues, quoting Confindustria studies, that the reuse system has negative repercussions on health (increased probability of contamination by microbes), on the environment (increased water and energy consumption) and on the climate (increased CO2 emissions).
The director of Confindustria explains that "for the single-use system", that of recycling, "the greatest impacts are generated during the upstream production of the articles, while the main contribution to the impacts of the multi-use system is the use phase, i.e. the washing of the articles". The two solutions, he adds, should be "complementary and not competing".
WILL THE SECURITY DEPOSIT MARK THE END OF CONAI?
Mariotti also criticizes the European will to set up a security deposit (or security deposit) system for the return of certain types of disposable packaging: "this aspect", he declares, "risk of penalizing member states such as Italy which have based their system on CONAI and on supply chain consortia, managing in any case to exceed all the European targets for starting up the recycling of packaging waste”.
CONAI is the consortium of companies that produce and use packaging: it collaborates with the municipalities to ensure the recycling of waste from separate collection. The security deposit and returnable deposit system is instead used in Germany: critics of the packaging regulation point out that Ursula von der Leyen, president of the Commission, is German.
DATA ON GERMANY
In 2020, Germany recycled 55 percent of its urban and special waste: a value higher than the European Union average but lower than the Italian one (72 percent). In the same year, the German rate of reuse of recycled materials out of the total consumed was 13.4 percent: the European average was 12.8 percent, while the Italian rate was 21.6 percent.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/riuso-imballaggi-regolamento-unione-europea/ on Fri, 19 May 2023 07:57:34 +0000.