Permanent Materials Coalition welcomes European Parliament’s ambition on packaging recycling

The Permanent Material Alliance – comprising the Association of European Producers of Steel for Packaging (APEAL), European Aluminium, the European Container Glass Federation (FEVE) and Metal Packaging Europe – has said it welcomes the recyclability provisions adopted by the European Parliament’s plenary session on 22 November. The vote signals a commitment to more ambition, and this is a significant stride toward advancing the circular economy and positions the European Union as global leader in sustainable practices.

Recyclability performance grades

“The performance grades, and their strong qualitative recyclability criteria, will foster innovation by rewarding packaging that is designed for recycling whilst also being sufficiently and effectively collected, sorted, and recycled at scale. They are a great step forward to a truly EU Circular Economy,” said Alexis Van Maercke, secretary general of APEAL.

High-quality recycling

“The definition of high-quality recycling is a pre-requisite to encouraging economic operators to enhance recyclability,” said Krassimira Kazashka, CEO of Metal Packaging Europe. “We support the introduction of the concept for ‘high-quality recycling. However, the European Parliament missed the opportunity to have a more robust definition incentivising materials that can withstand multiple recycling loops without any change to their main material properties, stimulates design for recycling and further boosts effective and efficient recycling.”

Separate collection

Maarten Labberton, director of the Packaging Group of European Aluminium, commented: “High quality recycling of packaging materials highly depends on the availability of efficient separate collection and sorting systems for packaging waste. A timely and ambitious approach which encourages the separate collection of packing waste in all EU Member States is a must and we fully support the separate collection target of 90% endorsed by the European Parliament today.”

Ensuring a fair effort sharing by all materials to reduce packaging waste

“Aluminium, glass and steel are today already preventing waste as our materials are largely collected, sorted and undergo high-quality endless recycling into new loops,” added Adeline Farrelly, secretary general of FEVE. “We are glad to see that the European Parliament adopted packaging waste reduction targets to mitigate against the risk of substitution of fully circular materials (Permanent Materials) by difficult to recycle packaging materials.”