Environmental compliance… the latest developments

What are the latest developments concerning environmental legislation globally? We’ve picked out some highlights for you for September 2020.

Assessment of member states’ transposition of the SUP Directive

Members of the Break Free From Plastic movement and Seas At Risk, a group focused on the protection and restoration of marine environments, have made an assessment of member states’ transpositions of the Single-Use Plastics (SUP) Directive. The assessment, which comes at the midway point of the transposition period, coincided with Plastics Free July, a month-long initiative to raise awareness of just recovery principals for a more sustainable and responsible plastics economy.

The assessment looked at 19 member states, and categorized them as either green, yellow, orange or red, based on the progress made so far. France was the only country assessed to fall into the “green” category, thanks to a comprehensive national law adopted in February which greatly limits the use of single-use plastic goods in the country.

Falling under the yellow category are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. These countries have made some progress towards transposing the SUP Directive, but still fall behind France in terms of both scope and timing.

Next up are Estonia, Greece, Italy, Lithuania and Slovenia, who have all taken small initial steps towards adopting provisions. Coming up red are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and Poland. Except for Croatia, these countries have not yet initiated the legal processes to transpose the SUP Directive into national law.

Read the full assessment here.

German body publishes minimum standards for recyclable packaging

The German Zentrale Stelle Verpackungsregister (ZSVR), the independent body which performs certain monitoring and organisational tasks for the country’s packaging law, has published the 2020 edition of its minimum standards for determining the recyclability of packaging. These guidelines, which update the previous year’s version and were developed in cooperation with the Federal Environment Agency, form the basis for the modulation of the packaging schemes’ licencing fees.

Compared to the previous year’s version, most changes were made to Appendix 1, “Types of material, material fractions and recovery routes”. All the amendments are based on experiences from 2018 and 2019 and on corresponding feedback from the stakeholders involved.

The German packaging law requires schemes to provide manufacturers with an incentive – through modulation of their licencing fees – to use packaging that is as recyclable as possible.

The guidelines now published by the ZSVR make it possible to precisely determine a packaging’s recyclability and can be downloaded here.