The European container glass industry welcomes the European Parliament’s Environment (ENVI) Committee vote amending the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) to promote full packaging circularity, but remains deeply concerned that Intellectual Property Rights for packaging are not protected. The risk is that packaged products will start to look the same. Creative designs and iconic shapes will gradually disappear.
FEVE appreciates the Environment Committee’s recognition of proprietary packaging designs to some extent, but it falls well short of expectations.
Adeline Farrelly, Secretary General of FEVE, said, “We fear this will result in standardized packaging and the gradual demise of brand differentiation. We are committed to ensuring that glass packaging solutions, agreed with our customers, are designed with the minimal necessary weight and volume.
“However, we believe this measure restricts creative designs and iconic shapes of bottles often reflecting cultural heritage products to be placed on the market in future. This will massively dent the economic value these products bring to Europe and beyond.”
Farrelly highlighted, “We are glad to see that the ENVI Committee adopted ambitious packaging waste reduction targets to mitigate against the risk that heavier but circular materials like glass are replaced by lighter packaging materials that are harder to recycle or reuse.”
The vote acknowledges that materials such as glass are highly recyclable. Recyclability performance grades are a big step forward to a truly EU Circular Economy. These grades, a first of their kind, will reward packaging that can be recycled multiple times and that can feed into a closed material loop scheme.
Farrelly commented, “Separate collection and sorting are the prerequisite to guaranteeing high-quality recycling processes and to the fulfilling of the recyclability criteria. We therefore support the introduction of a mandatory 90 percent collection for recycling target.”
To read the full industry position click here.