Power point presentation to EU and Business Environment Council Workshop, Hong Kong, 21-Mar-2019.

Addressing the Plastic
Waste Challenge in Europe
Learning from Experience
21 March 2019
Jack O’Sullivan, Director Zero Waste Alliance Ireland
21 March 2019 1

EU Statistic Hong Kong
512,600,000 (116 per km2) Population: number & density 7,350,000 (6,732 per km2)
4,324,782 Area, km2 of land 1,105.7
28 Member States, with
many sub-regions
Administration Single Special
Administrative Region
70,685 Plastic waste produced, tonnes per day 2,000
< 30 % collected for
recycling
Plastic waste recycled, % < 15% recycled
0.138 Plastic waste produced, kg / person / day 0.272
16.3 Plastic waste produced, kg / km2 / day 1,808.8
8,622 (56% recycled) Plastic bottles disposed, tonnes per day 132 (14% recycled)
21 March 2019 2

Addressing the Plastic Waste Challenge in Europe
The Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive (94/62/EC)
•  Article 4: Prevent the generation of packaging waste
•  Article 5: Encourage re-use of packaging
•  Article 6: Promote recovery and recycling
•  Article 7: Implement return, collection and recovery systems
•  Article 15: Member States to use economic instruments to promote the
implementation of the objectives set out in the Directive
21 March 2019 4

Directive 2015/720 amending Directive 94/62/EC is aimed at
reducing the consumption of lightweight plastic carrier bags
The Directive requires Member States to achieve a sustained
reduction in the use of lightweight plastic carrier bags, including
the setting of national consumption reduction targets.
21 March 2019 5

A success story (Ireland, from 2002)
plastic bag charge
•  €0.15 per bag in2002, raised to €0.22 per bag in 2007
•  the annual bag usage dropped from almost 350 to 14 per person by 2012
•  plastic bags now account for only 0.14 % of total litter compared to 5 % in
2002.
Revenue (€12.8m in 2013) is directed to a ring-fenced fund to support
waste management, litter prevention, environmental research and
other initiatives.
21 March 2019 6

Waste collection systems in European Member States
•  vary widely
•  the collection of all recyclables in a single waste bin (co-mingled collection) does not
assist recycling, compared with separate collections for different types of recyclable
materials (separate collection of waste fractions leads to higher recycling levels)
•  On average, only 19 % of generated municipal waste is collected separately in EU-28
capitals
•  80% of waste still ends up in the residual waste bin.
21 March 2019 7

Waste collection systems in European Member States
A problem with separation at source
•  it demands more active involvement of the householder,
•  it demands more space for the increased number of containers
These are factors to be taken into consideration in Hong Kong
Hong Kong is 3,911 times smaller than EU; population density much higher
21 March 2019 8

Pay-by-weight systems
•  work well in some EU Member States, and are being more widely
introduced.
•  Charges are based on the amounts of residual waste collected, and
these charges cross-finance the collection of other separately collected
fractions.
•  There has been little or no public resistance to these charges,
•  Charges help to raise awareness of the cost of dealing with waste.
21 March 2019 9

Deposit and refund systems (DRSs) for beverage containers, especially PET bottles
implemented in less than 50% of EU Member States.
Implemented in Estonia, Latvia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Lithuania, Croatia,
Denmark.
Consideration is being given to the introduction of a DRS
for PET bottles in Hong Kong,
and the European experience will be relevant.
21 March 2019 10

In January 2019, a near-final text was agreed for a new and comprehensive Directive aimed at reducing the
impact of a wide range of plastic products on the environment.
Measures:
(i)  restrictions on the placing on the market of certain single-use plastic products for which alternatives exist,
(ii)  design requirements for single-use plastic beverage containers,
(iii)  extended producer responsibility schemes for certain single-use plastic products,
(iv)  Member States must achieve a minimum separate collection target for single-use plastic beverage bottles,
and
(v)  Member States must take measures to raise awareness about the impact of littering and inappropriate
disposal of waste on the environment (in particular, the aquatic environment), and about the available re-use
and waste management options.
21 March 2019 11

Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is a measure to
encourage manufacturers, distributors and retailers to take the
necessary steps to prevent the generation of waste.
21 March 2019 12

Extended producer responsibility (EPR)
Producers are given a significant responsibility – financial and/or physical – for the treatment
or disposal of post-consumer products.
EPR can be used to
(a)  incentivise the prevention of waste at source,
(b)  promote environmentally beneficial and sustainable product design,
(c)  support the achievement of public recycling and materials
management goals,
(d)  encourage innovation, and
(e)  help to develop the Circular Economy.
21 March 2019 13

The Waste Framework Directive 2018/851 (WFD)
“general minimum requirements for Extended Producer
Responsibility (EPR) schemes”
21 March 2019 14

EU Action Plan for a Circular Economy (December 2015)
•  Plastics are a key priority;
•  Objective is to ‘prepare a strategy addressing the challenges
posed by plastics throughout the value chain and taking into
account their entire life-cycle’ for action at EU level.
21 March 2019 15

The Circular Economy: key commitments for action
1.  innovation to make plastics and plastic products easier to
recycle, so that, by 2030, all plastics packaging placed on the EU
market will be reusable or easily recycled;
2.  recognition that innovation is a key enabler for the transformation of
the plastic waste problem and for the generation of viable solutions;
3.  better implementation of existing obligations on separate
collection of plastics.
21 March 2019 16

Circular Economy – key commitments for action:
4.  development of a market for recycled plastics;
5.  development of quality standards for sorted plastic waste and
recycled plastics, and promoting the development of international
standards;
6.  raising public awareness and ensuring high-quality separate
collection.
21 March 2019 17

Circular Economy: key commitments for action, continued
7.  a legislative proposal on port reception facilities;
8.  clarifying which plastics can be labelled 'compostable' or
'biodegradable' and how they should be handled after use;
9.  harmonised rules for defining and labelling compostable and
biodegradable plastics.
21 March 2019 18

Circular Economy: key commitments for action, continued
10. restricting the use of intentionally added microplastics;
11. development of new materials that are fully biodegradable in
seawater and freshwater and are harmless for the environment and
ecosystems;
12. developing innovative business models, reverse logistics and
designing for sustainability; and,
13. exploring the use of alternative feedstocks for the manufacture of
plastic materials, to avoid using fossil resources.
21 March 2019 19

In addition to raising public awareness, addressing the “plastic
challenge” can also be helped by working closely with business
organisations (not forgetting the numerous retail outlets and
“take-aways” which generate large quantities of short-lived
packaging) and by encouraging civil society and NGOs in
particular to launch campaigns to reduce plastic waste.
21 March 2019 20

Some key drivers to achieving the aim of reducing plastic waste in Hong Kong:
(a) recognition by citizens of Hong Kong that the accumulation of plastic waste is disturbing, bad
for tourism, bad for business, a source of health problems and an economic cost;
(b) recognition by government and citizens of Hong Kong that discarded plastic waste could be
transformed into a valuable raw material for further processing, giving employment and
added value; and,
(c) introduction of a fiscally neutral system of taxes and incentives to encourage better
segregation at source, improved collection of plastic waste, deposit and refund systems, to
provide funds for research and development, and for socially beneficial local community waste
management systems.
21 March 2019 21

Zero Waste Alliance Ireland has (since 2003) advocated that:
(a) Waste is a community resource, to be used for the benefit of the
communities which produce it;
(b) Differential tax rates can be used to incentivise “good” products which can
be re-used, repaired, dis-assembled and their components recycled; and,
(c)  Human societies must behave like natural systems, creating nothing which
cannot be re-used or fed back into the natural cycles of materials.
21 March 2019 22

The most important lesson from the European
experience is that the problems are complex and multi-
faceted, and will require an orchestrated multi-agency
approach at several levels to achieve goals which
should firstly be agreed by all stakeholders.
21 March 2019 23

The further discussions at the plastic waste
reduction workshop today, 21 March 2019, will help
to clarify and develop our relevant goals and
objectives.
21 March 2019 24

Thank you.
Go raibh maith agat
Dėkoju.
谢谢
21 March 2019 25

Jack O’Sullivan
Zero Waste Alliance Ireland
Tullynally, Castlepollard, County Westmeath
Email: jack@zerowasteireland.com and jack@ems-ireland.org
26
21 March 2019

Power point presentation to EU and Business Environment Council Workshop, Hong Kong, 21-Mar-2019.

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Power point presentation to EU and Business Environment Council Workshop, Hong Kong, 21-Mar-2019.