Europe’s packaging producers appear to be taking seriously the EU’s Essential Requirements, set up to ensure no more packaging is used within the EU than is absolutely necessary, despite a lack of enforcement in many countries.
So says a European Organisation for Packaging and the Environment (Europen) survey, which sought to identify how many Europen members were actively complying with the legislation, part of the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive.
The UK and France are currently alone in Europe in actually acting to enforce compliance but Europen’s research nevertheless found that 65% of those packaging companies surveyed Europe-wide were already using the EN13428 source reduction standard to show adherence to the Directive, while a further 12% have internal procedures to demonstrate compliance.
Of those with no procedure, all but one was currently based outside the EU in Accession States, where compliance is not yet mandatory.
Europen has made its survey results available to the EC’s environment directorate general, is sending them to EU member state officials and is developing examples of best practice based on members’ experiences in complying with the directive.