The European Union Is Fighting Plastic Waste

The EU is waging a war on plastic waste as part of an urgent plan to clean up Europe and ensure that every piece of packaging on the continent is reused or recycled by 2030.

Following China’s decision to ban imports of recyclable foreign materials, Brussels on Tuesday launched a plastic products strategy aimed at changing Europe’s mindset, tax system, and modernizing plastics production and collection by investing € 350 million in research.

As part of its strategy, the EU will conduct an impact assessment on different taxation practices for the use of single-use plastics, although details of potential patterns, in particular, are not available from published policy papers.

The EU wants 55% of all plastic to be recycled by 2030, and member states have reduced the use of bags per person from 90 per year to 40 by 2026.

The commission said it will facilitate easy access to tap water on the streets of Europe to reduce the demand for bottled water, and they will provide additional guidance to Member States on how to improve the sorting and collection of recyclable plastic by consumers.

The new port reception facilities will seek to simplify waste management to ensure less loading into the oceans, in line with the directive already published.

“Waste is becoming more and more a health problem because it degrades, gets a little bit, fish eat it, and everything comes back to our dinner table,” said European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen.