Organisations representing European recyclers have rejected calls made by European soft drinks association Unesda (www.unesda.eu) and others for a priority access mechanism, or a ‘right-of-first-refusal’, for recycled PET issued from their own packaging, as part of revisions to the proposed in the European Commission’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive.

Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE, Brussels; www.plasticsrecyclers.eu), EuRIC (Schaerbeek, Belgium; www.euric-aisbl.eu), and European private waste management association FEAD (Brussels; www.fead.be) said in a joint statement that if implemented, such a right-of-first-refusal “would be detrimental to the development of recycling capacities in Europe, promoting monopolistic control of recycled polymers and going against free-market principles”.

The three groups said the calls were based around the supposition that there was an rPET shortage in the EU for the beverage sector. “Supposedly this scarcity is a result of non-beverage industries, in particular the fibre market, using a significant share of food-contact recycled PET.” 

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They added, “However, since the introduction of the mandatory recycled content target for PET beverage bottles in the Single Use Plastics Directive, the share of the fibre market has dropped sharply. In 2022, it accounted for only 5% of the total rPET market, as purchasing high-priced food-contact rPET is not financially viable for the fibre industry. 

“Consequently, the right of first refusal intends to address an issue of availability which does not exist.”

The greatest threat to packaging circularity was extremely low demand in the EU for rPET, which was forcing European recycling plants to run well below their capacities, as well as major prices fluctuations, the three organisations said. 

“Granting priority access to specific market players would result in a stable source of recycled materials to be used in certain categories of new packaging, but the beneficiaries of the priority access would be granted a monopolistic power to set prices for recyclates,” they added.

Authorities should instead “address the fundamental bottlenecks in today’s plastic packaging circular value chain [caused by] the insufficient collection of plastic packaging waste and the lack of design for recycling”.