Yesterday the European Commission (EC) said it wanted to amend the European Union\u2019s (EU) packaging and waste directive so that member states had a commitment to reduce consumption of single-use plastic bags.<\/p>\n
If approved by the European Parliament the proposals meant individual countries would be given powers to determine how they want to tackle the problem, whether by introducing charges, reduction targets or an outright ban under certain conditions.<\/p>\n
They would have to report their progress to the EC, which could take legal action if countries failed to tackle the problem.<\/p>\n
However Alexandre Dangis, managing director of the European Plastics Converters Association (EuPC), believed the Commission\u2019s proposal violated the basic principles of Europe\u2019s internal market.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has the potential to legalise the current Italian situation, where non-biodegradable and non-compostable bags are banned, this will have serious, detrimental impacts on plastics recycling in Europe, as we currently have serious issues when it comes to end of life solutions for bio-degradable plastics,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
PlasticsEurope advocacy director Dr Martin Engelmann argued the proposal \u201cmay lead to a situation in which some countries ban plastic bags, while others allow them.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuch a patchwork of rules is against the idea of the existing legislation and detrimental to the free movement of goods in Europe. It will create legal uncertainty which will in turn hinder investments,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile the British Plastics Federation said in a statement: \u201cThe issue doesn’t warrant this degree of attention as bags represent a tiny proportion of waste. Encouraging member states to place taxes on bag use will only increase further the fiscal burden attributable to environmentally-inspired legislation.<\/p>\n
\u201cSadly UK government abandoned its customary measure, threw caution to the wind and announced the imposition of a levy at the recent LibDem party conference.\u201d<\/p>\n
The EC environment commissioner Janez Poto\u010dnik yesterday told a press conference in Brussels that if the region followed the practice of some member states, including Ireland and Demark, which had introduced levies on bags then consumption in the EU could be reduced by \u201cas much as 80%\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday the European Commission (EC) said it wanted to amend the European Union\u2019s (EU) packaging and waste directive so that member states had a commitment to reduce consumption of single-use plastic bags. If approved by the European Parliament the proposals meant individual countries would be given powers to determine how they want to tackle the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[],"supplier":[2755,2317,4514,5932,5585,5933],"class_list":["post-17858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","supplier-british-plastics-federation","supplier-european-commission","supplier-european-parliament","supplier-european-plastics-converters-association","supplier-european-union","supplier-plasticseurope"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17858"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=17858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}