The European Commission on Tuesday launched a drive to clean up the plastic choking oceans and filling landfills.
Its Plastics Strategy is an attempt to get companies and consumers to drop their addiction to plastic, with the goal of ensuring all plastic packaging is reusable or recyclable by 2030.
“If we don’t change the way we produce and use plastics, there will be more plastics than fish in our oceans by 2050,” said Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans. “We must stop plastics getting into our water, our food, and even our bodies.”
The initiative gets Brussels out in front of an issue of growing public concern, making it perhaps an easy political win. A tougher approach on plastics could create jobs in recycling, engineering and research, the Commission said.
The strategy is a grab-bag of legislative proposals, updates to existing goals and other measures that still have to be agreed with Parliament and Council. Parts may end up being watered down, especially the ambitious 2030 target, which is already seeing push-back from the plastics industry.
Europe generates about 26 million tons of plastic a year, but only about 30 percent of that is recycled. The rest is largely incinerated or dumped into landfills.
The Commission estimates the economic loss at €100 billion per year for plastic packaging alone. “Somebody should be interested in this money,” said Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen.
The Commission certainly is. The strategy includes new requirements to design products that are recyclable, and EU-wide quality standards for plastic waste, which can then be more easily plugged back into the production chain. It will also encourage producers to use as much recycled material as possible. To help, Brussels will spend €100 million a year on plastics recycling and clean-up research.
A surprise proposal last week by Budget Commissioner Günther Oettinger to bring in a plastics tax — it was aimed both at shoring up the bloc’s finances after Brexit and making it more expensive to litter, and was widely resisted by industry and some NGOs — managed to get a mention in the strategy.
But far from committing to it, the Commission said it will “explore the feasibility of introducing measures of a fiscal nature at the EU level.” The income stream generated from such a tax would enter the EU’s coffers, but issues remain on how such a levy would work.
“It is an income stream which is addressing our political targets, reducing crude oil. So in that sense it’s logic. If we manage to do it, fine, but I’m not 100 percent sure yet,” said Katainen.
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The Commission also focused on seas, where each year between 150,000 and 500,000 tons of plastic waste enters the oceans. The strategy calls marine litter — debris from items such as plastic products and abandoned fishing gear — a “visible and alarming” sign of the problem of waste.
The EU also wants to crack down on microplastics — minuscule bits of plastic less than 5 millimeters in size. Brussels is considering a ban on intentionally added microplastics found in cosmetics, body washes and paints. It also wants to carry out more research into unintentional microplastics, like the rubber worn off tires.
Finally, consumers will also bear part of the burden in the anti-plastics effort, as the Commission plans to crack down on single-use plastics like straws, food and drink containers, cutlery and drink bottles. That will require a shift in behavior.
“Many of you have children, like I do,” said Timmermans. “If you explain that a plastic straw which took five seconds to make will be used for five minutes, and will last for 500 years, children won’t use it anymore.”
The spur for action is not just public disquiet at the growing plastic pollution problem. A lot of EU waste that isn’t burned has been traditionally shipped for processing to China, but this year Beijing largely ended the practice, leaving European waste shippers scrambling for new places to get rid of the Continent’s garbage.
Katainen said he had to “thank China” for spurring a change of action in Europe.
Next steps
The strategy is the first step in a long process before legislative or industry change can be made. The Commission plans to announce a legislative initiative in May targeting single-use plastics, with the goal of having a new law in place by next year. The Commission is also proposing a revised directive on handling waste in ports, to avoid ships dumping it into the sea.
“This strategy is just the beginning of the process,” Delphine Lévi-Alvarès from the Rethink Plastic alliance said. “It’s the declaration of intention, and now we need to see action.”
The Plastics Strategy is relatively uncontroversial among member countries, many of which have brought in their own measures to end plastic pollution. France and Sweden’s environment ministers asked the Commission for binding, ambitious measures.
The industry was less forthcoming. The Commission asked trade association PlasticsEurope to offer voluntary commitments on behalf of the whole industry to back its ambitious strategy.
These were published today, but actors at different points in the plastics chain failed to commit to a single line, so two separate documents were published.
The strategy got mixed reviews from NGOs. Emma Priestland, marine litter officer with NGO Seas at Risk, called efforts to cut down on maritime waste “exciting news,” but others like Zero Waste Europe called it only an “initial step to raise awareness” on plastic pollution and to rethink the approach to plastics.
“Considering the urgency and the scale of the problem, the Commission has fallen short to bring real change,” said Ariadna Rodrigo, product policy campaigner at Zero Waste Europe.
Kait Bolongaro contributed reporting.
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