ENVI committee objects to mass balance methodology for recycled content in SUPD
22 Apr 2024 --- The European Parliament Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI committee) has passed a motion supporting the reconsideration of the mass balance method for recycled content calculation in the Single-Use Plastics Directive (SUPD).
The motion for a resolution to the European Commission (EC) Implementing Decision laying down rules on calculation, verification and reporting of data on recycled plastic content in single-use plastic beverage bottles was brought forth by rapporteur Jutta Paulus. It passed with 26 to 24 votes in the ENVI committee and is now up for discussion at the plenary vote in Strasbourg.
The draft motion states that the committee “stresses that it is of paramount importance that provisions with regard to accounting for chemical recycling are established in a context that ensures the complementarity of chemical recycling to those cases where plastic waste cannot be mechanically recycled.”
Furthermore, the committee calls on the EC to adopt methodologies for calculating and verifying recycled content with regard to pyrolysis and gasification.
Stakeholder support
Civil society organizations and companies, including Alpla, Deutsche Umwelthilfe, Ecopreneur, Environmental Coalition on Standards, European Environmental Bureau, European Recycling Industries’ Confederation (EuRIC), European Waste Management Association, Rethink Plastic, Werner & Mertz and Zero Waste Europe, support the motion.
The organizations believe that the EC’s draft in its current form would create an unlevel playing field between recycling technologies, keep consumers from making sustainable purchasing decisions due to structural greenwashing and therefore contradict the objective of the SUPD to promote the transition to a circular economy.
“Establishing a recycled content calculation method under the SUPD based on the fuel-use exempt model would set an alarming precedent for other regulations, such as packaging, automotive, eco-design and textiles,” says EuRic.
The ENVI committee resolution establishes a recycling hierarchy in which chemical recycling only deals with plastic waste that cannot undergo mechanical recycling.“An appropriate method should be adopted under the framework of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), and chemical recycling should be a last resort, only when mechanical recycling falls short.”
Shaping the industry’s future
Ahead of next week’s plenary vote, the waste management stakeholders are urging EU lawmakers to support drafting a resolution opposing the proposed mass balance approach.
“This method leads to significant discrepancies between claimed and actual recycled content, thus misleading consumers with false green claims, while it also unfairly favors chemical over mechanical recycling technologies and fundamentally undermines the SUPD’s core objective of realizing a circular economy,” they write.
The value chain furthermore highlights that 80% of the packaging falling within the scope of this Implementing Decision is made of PET, “a plastic that is today properly and safely recycled by mechanical process.”
“Thanks to the investments of the European mechanical recycling industry, the installed capacity for PET food-grade in 2022 is already enough to meet not only the 2025 target of 25% recycled content for beverage bottles but also the 2030 target. Thus, the plastic waste streams that are currently mechanically recycled should not be tampered with.”
Moreover, they explain that pyrolysis or gasification cannot accept PET as feedstock and are designed to recover substances from other plastics (mainly PE and PP), for which recycled content targets are set for 2030.
“It therefore seems inappropriate to expedite and use a legislative instrument with such a narrow scope to shape the future of an entire recycling industry,” says the waste management value chain.
Transparency and circularity
The ENVI committee resolution establishes a recycling hierarchy in which chemical recycling effectively only deals with plastic waste that cannot undergo mechanical recycling.
“We cannot trust the results of mass balance accounting. The non-proportional allocation of recycled content is misleading and inconsistent with high-quality recycling. The ENVI Committee is rightfully asking the European Commission to revise its methodology to ensure transparent claims and drive true circularity,” says Mathilde Crêpy, head of environmental transparency at ECOS.
In November 2023, Beyond Plastics and IPEN (the International Pollutants Elimination Network) released a study report suggesting that chemical recycling is “more of a marketing and lobbying tactic by the petrochemical industry than an effective solution to the problem of plastic waste.”
The report challenged the viability and safety of chemical recycling as a solution to plastic pollution. It argued that it does not align with the goal of reducing global plastic pollution and may even support expanding plastic production.
Meanwhile, in October, 20 associations proposed a fuel-use-exempt model, stating that it would establish a robust system compatible with chemical recycling routes, enabling producers and users of recycled content to meet market expectations and comply with EU legislation effectively.
The signatories, including notable industry associations like the Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment, A Circular Economy for Flexible Packaging and Chemical Recycling Europe, underscored the necessity for an EU-harmonized calculation and verification method to allocate recycled content to output products.
By Radhika Sikaria
