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Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive EU Implementation

The Packaging Directive - EU Implementation, enforcement and compliance

Overview

The Packaging Directive aims of:

  • harmonise national measures so as to prevent or reduce the impacts of packaging on the environment of all Member States and Third Countries and to remove obstacles to trade and distortion and restriction of competition; and
  • prevent the production of packaging waste, and reduce the amount of waste for final disposal through packaging re-use, recycling and other forms of recovery.

Targets

The recovery and recycling targets set by the original Directive for packaging waste were revised in 2004 by an amending Directive 2004/12/EC, increasing the recycling targets to be met by Member States by 2008 to 60% overall recovery of packaging waste; and 55% minimum and 80% maximum recycling of packaging waste. The amending Directive also set material specific recycling targets be weight, as follows: glass (60%), paper and board (60%), metals (50%), plastics (22.5%), and wood (15%). The UK achieved these targets at the end of 2008 and in some cases exceeded them, but must now at least maintain these levels.

Commission reports on implementation of the Directive 

In December 2006, the European Commission announced that the recycling and recovery targets contained on the Packaging Directive are currently optimal and proposed these should remain stable to enable all the Member States to catch-up with these targets.  

A study by Commission appointed consultants on the implementation of the Directive’s Essential Requirements was published in 2010.  

Article 21 Committee

The Article 21 Committee is the Directive's Technical Adaptation Committee (TAC) established by Article 21 of the Packaging Directive. It is chaired by the European Commission and its members are national experts of each Member State. The committee meets once every 12-18 months to discuss issues on harmonisation and implementation of the Directive.

BIS makes public its unofficial notes from these meetings which are distributed via an BIS electronic mailing list. To be added to this list please email sustainability@bis.gov.uk. Copies of the latest meeting notes can also be downloaded from the related documents section.