European recycling industry association EuRIC has objected to MEPs’ decision to grant priority access to producers for some recycled plastics.
In a call backed by the European waste management association FEAD and Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE), it said that doing so would “strangle competition and breach EU law”.
The row came after the European Parliament’s environment committee voted to adopt a range of measures on reforming packaging regulations, which are due for a crunch final vote by the full parliament next month.
EuRIC and FEAD said there had been pressure in particular from the soft drinks industry that it should enjoy priority access to recycled plastics. Drinks firms have argued that they provide much of the PET available but may be outbid for the material by other users, leaving them with insufficient feedstock for their own use.
The three associations said: “This call originates in the claim of an rPET shortage in the EU for the beverage sector, a call that will have an impact in the future on other recycled polymers.
“Supposedly this scarcity is a result of non-beverage industries, in particular the fibre market, using a significant share of food-contact recycled PET.”
They said, however, that, since the introduction of the mandatory recycled content target for PET beverage bottles in the Single Use Plastics Directive, the share going to the fibre market has dropped sharply.
In 2022, fibre accounted for only 5% of the total rPET market, “as purchasing high-priced food-contact rPET is not financially viable for the fibre industry”, the three said.
Explaining their concerns, the associations said the request from the drinks industry “intends to address an issue of availability which does not exist”. They said there was extremely low demand in the EU for rPET and major price fluctuations occurred.
The European rPET market faced very low demand from the beverage industry, forcing recycling plants to run well below their capacities, a problem compounded by imports of both low-priced virgin PET and rPET.
Granting the drinks sector priory access to rPET would give it “monopolistic power to set prices for recyclates”, with recyclers unable to negotiate.
“EuRIC, PRE and FEAD alert that this provision, if implemented, would be detrimental to the development of recycling capacities in Europe, promoting monopolistic control of recycled polymers and going against free-market principles,” their statement said.
European soft drinks industry body Unesda supported the idea of «priority access to certain feedstocks for recycling”.
It explained: “This is a crucial condition to avoid the downcycling of food-contact packaging in non-food applications, and enable closed-loop recycling whenever this makes sense from an environmental and technical perspective.
“[This] will provide beverage producers with access to sufficient recycled materials to be able to meet the EU mandatory recycled content targets.”
Fuente: mrw.co.uk