Newsreader

Headimage abstract

Amendments to the single-use plastics fund law

According to Euwid, the committees for finance and economics are recommending some changes to the Bundesrat, the upper house of the German parliament, which is scheduled to vote on the government's draft on Dec. 16..

 

With the law, the government wants to implement requirements of the EU Single-Use Plastics Directive in Germany and oblige manufacturers or distributors of certain single-use plastic products to bear the costs incurred by municipalities for cleaning and disposing of this waste in public spaces from 2025. According to Euwid, it is still unclear how high the special levies will be, but small and medium-sized companies in particular are likely to face considerable costs. According to a controversial study recently published by the Federal Environment Agency, a total of 434 million euros in special levies will be payable annually by manufacturers and distributors of the disposable plastic products concerned. According to business associations, assessing the levy rates according to volume and quantities, as proposed by the UBA, would lead to a disproportionate cost burden on manufacturers and a massive over-recovery of the actual costs incurred by local authorities. The amendment proposed by the Economic Committee of the Bundesrat, to which the federal government's draft bill had been submitted for technical review, to determine the levy rates according to the proportion of waste generated by weight, is therefore supported by the business associations, according to Euwid, as is the Economic Committee's demand for annual reporting of the quantities of waste collected and disposed of in public areas. The Economics Committee also wants to exempt beverage bottles with deposits from the planned special levy and strengthen the role of the Single-Use Plastics Commission, is said. The proposed corrections are now being promoted to the German states by an alliance of associations comprising retailers, the food industry, system catering, brand-name manufacturers and plastic packaging manufacturers.
 

Sources:

  • euwid-recycling.de (Dec. 7, 2022)
  • Photo: © unsplash.com, Jasmin Sessler

Go back