Europe's food and drink industry expectations of the EU's Packaging and Packaging Waste review

Most of the food and drinks we enjoy comes inside protective packaging, such as glass containers, metal cans, carton boxes, PET bottles, paper wrappers and more. It protects food against external impacts, but can also create waste. With a proposal from the European Commission to revise the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive (PPWD) coming up shortly, what are the European food and drink industry's needs to support an effective move towards packaging circularity by 2030?

Packaging helps to ensure that the food retains its safety and quality throughout its life cycle. It also helps extending the shelf life of products, thereby contributing to preventing waste. At the same time, the linear manner by which resources are depleted to produce and use packaging and the way we dispose of packaging waste today is unsustainable.

FoodDrinkEurope fully supports the move towards circularity of packaging, looking at a comprehensive set of complementary actions, including making packaging more recyclable, re-using packaging wherever possible, exploring ways to reduce packaging from the design phase without compromising on food safety or quality, informing consumers about waste disposal and helping to boost collection rates, amongst others.

Personally, I am proud to represent a sector that strongly supports the EU’s ambition to achieve more sustainable food systems and which is committed to play its part showing tangible results. The EU Code of Conduct for Responsible Food Business and Marketing Practices, which FoodDrinkEurope led in its development and co-signed, is a testimony of this, including our commitment to improving the sustainability of packaging. In our Action Plan for Sustainable Food Systems, we want to take this a step further, helping the sector with concrete tools to improve circularity.

Over the years, our industry invested heavily in packaging recyclability and recycled content, from packaging design and packaging materials, to collection and recycling infrastructure, in line the EU’s direction of travel on this issue. By way of example, some of our largest companies have managed to put on the market packaging which is fully 100% recyclable - something which may sound easy to achieve, but which cannot be done overnight at such a scale and which requires significant financial investment and hard work over many years. We also collaborated with the European Commission on piloting green and inspiring initiatives over the years, and many other telling examples of industry actions are out there and ongoing.

To build on this work and in step with Europe’s circular economy ambitions, we need consistent and forward-looking policies, creating stable and persistent conditions to guide us. It is now critical to match long-term business investment pathways with the necessary policy enablers to help the transition that will be further elaborated in the review of the PPWD. If the revision of the PPWD does not deliver on feasible targets and solutions, this could negate these investments and efforts undertaken so far.

"If the revision of the PPWD does not deliver on feasible targets and solutions, this could negate investments and efforts undertaken [by food and packaging systems players] so far."

So, what do we hope the review of the PPWD will deliver? While it is hard to apply a 'one-size-fits-all' approach for a sector as diverse as food and drink, here are a few key points that are important to get right:

• Realistic, evidence-based and proportionate re-use and re-fill targets: Packaging reuse can help build a circular economy for packaging when it makes sense from a full life-cycle perspective. However, re-use in and of itself is not a silver bullet; it should be considered only when demonstrably beneficial for the environment. Realistic, evidence-based targets for re-use and re-fill must be considered in feasible proportion to other tools to improve packaging circularity, such as recycling.
• A holistic approach to recyclability: the food and drink sector is improving the recyclability of its packaging. However, achieving packaging circularity requires much more than stopping certain packaging methods. It requires concrete and collective efforts in investing in infrastructure and improving sorting and collection rates at local and national level.
• Smart recycled content targets: Targets on recycled content of food packaging are welcome, but it is important to ensure that targets can be met by those sectors concerned, taking into account the availability and costs of the recycled material, as well as the quality of infrastructure and technology. Legislation should not undermine packaging functionality, which plays a fundamental role in food safety. Instead, it should help boost innovation and unlock new recycling technologies to meet any such targets within realistic timeframes.

FoodDrinkEurope has recently launched a position paper with further recommendations on how to revise the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste legislation in such a way that caters for the specificities of food and drink production. Have a look and let us know if you can relate.

The European food and drink industry remains committed to unlocking the Circular Economy and making packaging more sustainable. Even in the wake of mounting crises, from rising energy costs, inflation, and global supply chain issues, we remain firmly committed to this goal.

Our expectations of the upcoming PPWD review are high, because it is so important to get this right. However, change on this scale takes more than a flick of the pen; it requires collaboration with supply chain actors, waste technologists, and authorities from local, national, and European level in the years to come.