At a time when Spain is facing pollution of the coast of Galicia following the grounding of a ship carrying plastic microbeads, members of the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) will vote on Thursday 11 January on the proposal for an EU regulation aimed at preventing microplastic pollution caused by the unintentional release of plastic pellets into the environment.
The rapporteur, João Albuquerque (Portuguese S&D), supports the proposal presented on 16 October, in particular the harmonised methodology for estimating losses and helping economic operators to monitor them, better handling practices for operators, compulsory certification or self-declarations of compliance depending on the size of the company in order to have a better overview of the actual total quantity of losses (see EUROPE 13272/3).
However, he wishes to strengthen the proposal by including powders, flakes and dust within its scope, in line with the scientific definition of microplastics. Environmental NGOs had already pointed to a flawed proposal in this respect (see EUROPE 13273/11).
The draft report lowers the annual tonnage of pellets handled in installations - a quantity of more than 250 tonnes (instead of more than 1,000 tonnes, as proposed by the Commission) being the threshold above which the regulation would apply to economic operators.
The rapporteur also believes that the exemptions proposed by the Commission should only apply to micro-enterprises and not to all SMEs.
See the draft report: https://aeur.eu/f/aay (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)