Alain D'haese discusses packaging legislation at Aerosols Expo in Mumbai

Alain D'haese highlighted the new regulation in Europe and how the European Union is evaluating packaging waste. D'haese said, "The legislation has been adopted and published. And we are in the implementation phase right now." He said, "We need to define a lot of criteria" for the USD 32-billion European aerosol market.

The first thing, D'haese said, is to have recyclability criteria in place for key aerosol suppliers in sectors such as personal care, household products, pharmaceuticals, paints, and industrial products. D'haese said, "We need to define and implement the recyclability criteria quickly because the 2030 deadline is five years away."

D'haese said, "There are also discussions related to the information to be provided to the consumer to facilitate sorting. This could be through pictograms. Since we need to label all packaging, we need to have guidelines for the new labels. Concerning the Design for Recycling guidelines, the idea is to keep it simple. For example, it will be based on a traffic-lights system with three columns: green, yellow, and red.

D'haese said, The European Union has been at the forefront of implementing strict packaging regulations. One key aspect is to push for recyclability. It mandates that all packaging must be recyclable, with clear guidelines to be developed through secondary legislation.

The mandate, D'haese said, is twofold: producers are required to include higher percentages of recycled materials in their plastic packaging. Also, in addition to waste reduction targets, there is a strong focus on extended producer responsibility (EPR), which compels manufacturers to take responsibility for the disposal of their packaging waste.

D'haese pointed out that "Today, the real problem is the timeline. The workload is huge, and the experts need to agree very quickly."

The key to managing plastic waste is having a robust system of collection, plus the sorting needs to be efficient. D'haese said, "Having an efficient recycling system is quite difficult. The key is to involve the consumer. The population needs to adhere to the recycling scheme that is put in place. That takes time, a lot of communication as well as education."

The message from D'haese for the Indian aerosol community is that the design of the system needs to be economically viable and that the price of the recycling should not be higher than the original packaging.

The WhatPackaging? view: The European Commission is under pressure to curb its green agenda in response to the US administration. Today there is tremendous pressure among the packaging industry, and European Union member states are urging the European Union to wind back sustainability rules.