German company Werner & Mertz (W&M, Mainz; www.werner-mertz.com), a manufacturer of laundry detergents and cleaning products, is regarded as a pioneer in circular economy in the country. Since 2012, the PET bottles used by the company have been made of 100% post-consumer recyclate. “As far as plastics are concerned, Germany is steering politically against a circular economy,” said managing partner Reinhard Schneider in a recent interview with German newspaper, Handelsblatt. “Unlike for example heating oil or petrol, virgin plastic is exempt from mineral oil tax. That is a concealed subsidy,” added Schneider.

He says he cannot understand why Germany is the only major EU member country where it is the taxpayer who pays the EU plastics tax and not those responsible for putting the plastics into circulation. “Really, firms that place the plastic on the market should pay EUR 800/t for virgin plastic – which works out at approximately 1.6 cents per conventional bottle,” says Schneider, and continues: “Instead, every one of us pays around EUR 16 of tax a year so that new plastic can stay cheap. The lobby has managed to get its own way because there is such a large virgin plastic industry.”

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Having put 727 mn bottles made of 100% recyclate into circulation since 2012, his company – which in 2022 posted sales of EUR 539 mn with a workforce of 1,141 – holds the “world record”.

That his competitors could not use comparable quantities of recyclate because of the lack of availability is regarded by Schneider as nothing but a pretext. “Recycled PET is at present 70% more expensive than virgin plastic – the gap was never greater. For many companies, packaging made of new plastic is a license to print money!”

Although plastics waste obtained from Germany’s yellow bag system does not cost anything, it has to be sorted and cleaned. Such technologies are only uneconomical until they are scalable. “Only when a large number of companies make recyclate the standard, will the unit price fall below that of the conventional packs,” Schneider adds. Germany could become a pioneer in the development and application of sorting technologies. Until now, however, it is “putting the brake on ecology”. And yet, converters are certainly willing to pay 20-30 cents more for a sustainable product.