Material minimization: Has the EU failed to implement effective reduction policies despite industry efforts?

31 Jul 2024 --- Innova Market Insights placed “Maximizing Minimization” as a top trend for 2024, noting a 41% increase in products carrying material reduction claims between 2019 and 2023. According to some analysts, European legislation is failing the packaging industry through insufficient research and misguided policies, which has led to all EU countries recently missing their waste reduction targets.

Improving recyclability is considered a secondary option to reducing material usage by consumers and many producers, and this has been reflected in global policy shifts. In China, strict legislation has been enforced to restrict excessive packaging, with detailed stipulations given on the permitted ratios of material to the products they carry. Such laws seek to penalize unnecessary waste on luxury products. 

However, in the EU, a more contested debate over how material reduction should be effectively enforced is ongoing, with scientists, policymakers and industry stakeholders grappling with whether reuse systems should be placed above recycling.

Polls in the UK have similarly shown that the country overwhelmingly supports tougher reuse legislation in the lead-up to the recent general election.

According to Innova’s survey, almost a third (29%) of global consumers say reduced material use in packaging positively influences their product choices.

Eamonn Bates, secretary general of 360 Foodservice — an EU lobbying group, tells Packaging Insights that the European Commission (EC) rushed legislation in the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive (PPWR), which has led to critical failures in material reduction. 

In the past week, the EC has taken all 27 EU governments to task for not meeting their waste management targets for municipal and packaging waste. “All this tells us that material reduction is not happening fast enough,” says Bates. 

Sealpac’s reduced material plastic packaging.The race away from single-use 
Failures in EU reduction policies need to be traced back to the targeting of single-use products, claims Bates. 

“A priority of the EU Green Deal is to reduce resource consumption in general in order to meet its 2050 climate targets,” he says. 

“Before the Green Deal was launched, the EC’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) was asked to do some scenario modeling in relation to climate action objectives. One of the conclusions of the JRC was that, to meet ambitious climate action goals, the EU needed to cut consumption of pulp and paper by 12% by 2050 based on 2016/17 consumption numbers.”

“The JRC concluded that such reduction levels would be achieved for graphic papers (for example, reams of copy paper, magazines and newspapers) by the ongoing digitalization of society. This is being confirmed in practice in the market.”

“But for packaging, the JRC said regulation would be needed, cue revision of the PPWR.”

“The big societal switch out of plastic packaging to paper, driven by politics, public opinion and notably, the EU’s Single Use Plastics Directive (SUPD), now makes paper the biggest packaging waste stream (even if a huge amount is very successfully recycled). Contrast this with the EC scientists’ point of view that paper packaging consumption must be cut,” says Bates. 

“So, how do we cut material consumption in packaging? By cutting single-use, goes the logic. This has become a policy mantra, even if serious LCA scientists will tell you that single-use items that are collected and recycled can often be just as or more sustainable than reusable alternatives. It depends on context.” 

Reducing plastics
Many industry players are actively trying to stay ahead of the curve by introducing reduced and more easily recyclable solutions, such as monomaterial designs. 

Kevin Groten, marketing and communications coordinator at Sealpac, tells us supermarkets are now prioritizing the reduction of plastic in their packaging. The packaging machinery company is responding to this demand by developing various packaging solutions that operate on a single base machine.

“One of Sealpac’s innovative packaging concepts is the ultra-light trays crafted from monoPP or monoPET. We’ve managed to reduce the material of the standard 190 x 144 mm tray, widely used in Europe, from 18 grams in 2003 to less than 10 grams today.”

“In different industries where thin, flexible film packaging is common, we strive to reduce film thickness even further. Our Rapid Air Forming system on thermoformers enhances forming consistency, particularly in the corners of packs, without needing additional stamping mechanisms. This innovation allows for up to 10% thinner films, contributing to material reduction.”

Studies on the effectiveness of recycling vary widely and debates over whether reuse is more effective are fierce.To continue developing even more reduced materials that do not compromise quality, the company continues to conduct R&D with suppliers, he says. “These efforts include testing mono-material films to improve recyclability and experimenting with biodegradable materials.”

Lightweighting and single-use 
The lightweighting efforts made by companies like Sealpac reflect the EC’s attempt to target single-use products, says Bates. 

“These ideas were included in the SUPD and then in a clumsy unworkable manner by the EC in its PPWR, notably for foodservice packaging. The EC rushed at it for reasons of political expediency and made a mess of the proposals. Industry lobbying annihilated what can only be described as incompetent provisions on reuse for the foodservice sector.”

“Clearly the EC has failed to reduce material consumption via this route and the EU27 governments and the European Parliament had nothing better to offer.”

“Because of the PPWD, lightweighting became a leitmotif — in other words, material consumption reduction. Cue, on the other hand, the spectacular rise of flexible plastic packs. Great products, but a real challenge to collect effectively for recycling.”

Bates asserts that the PPWR missed a “golden opportunity” to promote reuse systems and guide a transition to a better balance between single-use and reuse.

“This has occurred because the EC has no understanding of what it was trying to achieve other than throw out some arbitrary ill-conceived short term bans and targets, most of which got rejected.”

“It has neither the expertise or experience in-house to develop smart measures for promoting change in the packaging field. Nor does it have the culture of working directly and effectively with the stakeholders that have that expertise and experience to find optimum solutions to reaching long term reduction goals,” he concludes. 

By Louis Gore-Langton