WHY DOES THE EU ALWAYS PICK ON PACKAGING
“No one has ever seen a photograph of one tonne of CO2 but politicians can readily point to packaging waste which is visible to consumers every day”
THIS statement by an executive for a multi-national packaging manufacturer beautifully describes why packaging remains a convenient environmental scapegoat and why an increase in more harmful attacks on packaging from the political quarter can be expected in the coming years.
Later this year EU leaders meet for a mid-term review of progress towards achievement of the 2010 goals set for Europe’s economy, known as the Lisbon strategy. As already signalled by the recent Kok Report, Europe is falling behind our competitors economically, so European leaders and the European Commission are unlikely to advocate more environmental legislation.
Two big EU environmental programmes – climate change, with its emissions trading scheme already in place and the chemical proposals known as REACH – are already the cause of anxiety among industrial leaders who see them as a further burden on our economies at a time when Europe is struggling to keep up with North American and Asian growth rates.
Precisely because of this slackening in demand for more environmental regulation in other areas, packaging will remain the soft and convenient option for those politicians keen to be regarded as caring for our environment.
While 2004 marked the 10th anniversary of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive and a large part of these past years have been devoted to issues surrounding the recovery and recycling of packaging, the current trend and likely future direction of regulations on packaging and packaged goods is becoming more complex, with potentially higher risks for industry.
Foremost among the new attacks on packaging is the alarming notion increasingly being heard from officials of some Members States: that packaging is somehow harmful for the environment is therefore ecologically undesirable and the solution likes in its taxation. Indeed this was the message from Belgian Prime Minister, Guy Verofstady, when we announced a big increase in taxes on packaging.
The introduction of taxes on non-refillable beverage containers and their increase by 50% from one year to the next in Belgium illustrates this, Belgian tax on some packaging is greater than the price of the product.
Is packaging to become the next tobacco or petrol product that governments use to raise tax revenue? We see this trend in new legislation proposed in Hungary to continue product fees for packaged goods while maintaining producer responsibility obligations to contribute to packaging waste recovery schemes. And the German government is determined to enshrine in legislation the concept of “good and bad packaging”, which encourages further discrimination. Little opposition to this idea is heard from the European Commission.
These developments and others like them, if uncontested by our industry, threaten every company with an economic stage in packaging, potentially leading to a narrowing of choice of packaging and packaging materials and risk hampering innovation, the life blood of our business.
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