On Friday 15 May, the environmental NGOs Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) and Rethink Plastic Alliance expressed concern that targets for separate collection of plastic bottles, which were imposed by EU legislation, might be undermined.
They urge the Commission and Member States to resist any attempts by interest groups to water down implementation of the directive on single-use plastics (EU 2019/904) which came into force last July.
The directive requires Member States to ensure that 90% of plastic bottles are collected as a separate waste stream by 2029 at the latest.
However, the NGOs warn that, in Austria and the Czech Republic, discussions are under way which suggest that this target for separate collection could be achieved by including bottles after waste has been sorted.
The NGOs point out that including bottles after waste has been sorted is not equivalent to collecting it separately and does not solve the problem of pollution. They believe that the deposit return system (DRS) alone will enable high quality bottle-to-bottle recycling and effective reduction of litter.
Delphine Lévi Alvarès, coordinator of the Rethink Plastic Alliance and the Break Free from Plastic (BFFP) Europe movement says that “DRSs have successfully existed for many years in some EU countries like Germany and now others, such as Portugal, Latvia and Romania, are setting the course for their implementation, since a DRS is the most effective way to ensure high collection of beverage containers and reduce pollution”.
“Pulling plastic bottles out of mixed packaging or residual waste would jeopardise all efforts to enable the desired bottle-to-bottle recycling. The required material quality cannot be achieved with those modes of collection, due to impurities and adhesions”, said Barbara Metz, Deputy Executive Director of DUH, in a press release. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)