The "recovery of sorted recyclables" sector should be included as particularly affected by high energy prices.

 

The decision on the Federal Government's draft bill on the electricity price brake (StromPBG) by the Bundestag and Bundesrat is due on December 15 and 16. The recycling industry associations BDSV, BDE, bvse and VDM urgently call for improvements to the draft law on the introduction of an electricity price brake and to the amendment of other energy law provisions. In the current version, they see a considerable contradiction to the rapid crisis aid announced by the Federal Government and urgently required for the recycling industry, which is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises. In a joint statement, the associations criticized the excessively high bureaucratic hurdles, the risk of reclaiming aid paid and possible distortion of competition. They call for the companies' obligations to provide evidence to be reduced to an absolute minimum, as well as the formal application procedure. Simple reports to the energy suppliers should suffice as proof. In the view of the signatories, this is the only way to provide the necessary rapid assistance. The associations of the waste disposal and recycling industry are particularly critical of the fact that the StromPBG excludes the sector "recovery of sorted recyclable materials" from the list of sectors and subsectors that are particularly affected by high energy prices according to the European Commission's temporary crisis framework, as in the Commission's list, and that the German government also fails to take them into account in the current draft bill. The companies supplied the processing industry with recycling raw materials by collecting, sorting and processing waste, the associations stress. This waste is essentially not sorted by hand, but is processed in an energy-intensive manner. Companies in the recycling industry are thus affected by the energy crisis in the same way as manufacturing sectors of the plastics industry, the associations say.
 

Sources:

• euwid-recycling.de, recyclingportal.eu (Dec. 14, 2022)
• Photo: Pixabay