The European plastics industry has welcomed the EU Commission's Green Paper on plastics waste, dubbing it a "catalyst for joint action amongst different key players to achieve the vision of Zero Plastics to Landfill by 2020".
The PlasticsEurope organisation says it supports alternative solutions to the landfilling of plastics waste and to maintaining plastics in the circular economy for as long as possible.
“The review of the Landfill Directive in 2014 offers an opportunity to make a step-change in the EU’s resource efficiency policy,” says Dr Wilfried Haensel, executive director of PlasticsEurope.
“The inclusion of a landfill ban on plastics waste in the Directive will stimulate the plastic recycling sector and will make more plastic waste available for efficient energy recovery to produce electricity and heat.”
Dr Haensel adds that this approach will ultimately lead to the creation of jobs, and to Europe being “less dependent on energy imports”.
The European plastics industry plans to respond to the Green Paper and provide “detailed information on our vision towards increased sustainability of plastic products”.
On 7 March, Alexandre Dangis, managing director of trade association European Plastics Converters (EuPC), spoke in Brussels at the Waste Free Oceans conference, on Public & Private Solutions to Marine Litter.
“At times when future polymer sourcing for European plastics converters remains unpredictable, and uncertain, there is a clear need to optimise the collection and sorting of plastics waste in order for the plastics industry to be more resource efficient,” he says.
“The need to incorporate more plastics recyclates in final applications will only increase the sustainability of plastics products.
“We are looking forward to analysing further the proposal of the Commission and discussing opportunities within the plastics value chain”.
According to PlasticsEurope, every year in Europe, 10 million tonnes of post-consumer plastic waste is buried in landfills. “Zero landfilling will also help prevent plastics from reaching the marine environment,” the organisation says.
“According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 80% of all marine litter originates from land. Better waste management would be one important step to reduce marine litter.”
