The European Recycling Industries’ Confederation (EuRIC) strongly welcomes the call made by Plastics Europe for a mandatory EU recycled content target for plastics packaging of 30% by 2030, and looks forward to working with the entire packaging value chain to support an ambitious revision of the  Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive (PPWD).

As consistently stressed ^[1] by EuRIC, European recyclers strongly support mandatory and quantitative recycled content targets for packaging production as an efficient policy instrument to steer the demand for high-quality recycled materials and invest throughout the packaging value chain – from design to end-of-life collection and recycling.

For Paul Mayhew, President of EuRIC Plastics Recycling Branch, "this call made from the voice of plastics manufacturers is a major step forward towards more circularity in the field of packaging and a recognition that binding recycled content targets in EU legislation are a powerful market signal to scale-up circular value chains. It has proved to be an extremely efficient tool for beverage bottles in pulling the demand for food-grade rPET and de-correlating prices from the ever-fluctuating oil market. Extending such an obligation to plastic packaging at large will give the long-term certainty the packaging value chain needs to scale-up and be in a position to supply high-quality recycled polymers”, he added.

With substantial room to improve the uptake of raw materials from recycling (RMR) in a number of plastic packaging types, the recycling industry looks forward cooperating with the plastics industry to meet such a target by 2030.

Emmanuel KATRAKIS, Secretary General of EuRIC, stressed that “transitioning towards a circular economy is key to achieve climate-neutrality. Binding recycled content targets for plastics and other materials will play a key role in achieving that goal. On top of push-and-pull measures, a comprehensive policy framework that gives an edge to circular value chains in the EU and globally is absolutely essential”, he concluded.

^[1] See for instance EuRIC position paper on the Assessment for the revision of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive (PPWD) 94/62/EC.