Degradable fruit stickers, refillable beer bottles, smaller delivery boxes: these are just a few of the plans presented by the European Commission today to reduce the amount of packaging waste. If it is up to the Commission, the business community will have to deal with these steps in the first few years. But this is not new for some companies: they are already working on sustainable packaging.

Walter Morriën, one of the owners of De Koffiejongens, started with recyclable coffee cups five years ago. “We saw that coffee capsules are always made of plastic or aluminum. We thought that was strange and that’s why we started developing biodegradable capsules,” he says.

In 2020, ‘his’ coffee cups made of corn and sugar cane appeared on the market for the first time. The capsules can be used in the GFT bin. “The capsules decay at the rate of a banana peel or orange peel,” says Morriën. He sells about 20 million a year in the Netherlands and Belgium together.

Coffee capsules are one of the products covered by the EC’s proposal. If the proposal is passed, all cups would have to be compostable two years after entering the wet.

The plans of the European Commission should probably lead to the amount of packaging material per inhabitant of Europe being 15 percent less in 2040 than in 2018. The mountain of waste could thus be reduced by more than a third.

The committee’s plans are comprehensive: different products have different goals. For example, the guidelines relate to reducing the amount of packaging material used. Packaging – such as dozens of internet orders – may only contain 40 percent empty space. At least, if it is up to the Commission.

Mette Jensen of PurePack is particularly pleased with the plan to pack products in smaller delivery boxes. “When I see what kind of delivery cars are driving through the street here: that is actually not possible.”

Jensen’s company sells, among other things, prepared packaging that is produced CO2 neutral and biodegradable bags. That is also a spearhead of the committee proposal: for example, the EC wants more packaging that is reusable and refillable. What is not reusable must be degradable or recyclable.

Jensen notes that in recent years there has been a greater need for sustainable packaging among its customers. But the process is not as simple as sustainability may sound. “There is not just a ready-made package ready for every product,” says Jensen. “Take a manufacturer who wants to pack the confirmation. Then it’s inconvenient if the packaging doesn’t last as long as the product.”

Information organization Milieu Centraal welcomes the plans. “We always say: reduce packaging in particular, and otherwise ensure that packaging is recyclable for as long as possible. This is largely what these guidelines are intended for,” says consultant Paulien van der Geest. “It is very good that there will be strict regulations. Then you get a level playing field that everyone has to participate in, then things go much faster than when there are a few pioneers.”

She does have some critical notes, for example when it comes to recyclable coffee cups. “If you make coffee cups biodegradable, you use agricultural land to make something that you then throw away. Because you have to ensure that more and sugar cane are grown, while we are dealing with a working world population and the question is how we are going to feed it. “

According to Van der Geest, it is therefore better to stay away from such packaging altogether and use a percolator or bean machine instead.

Milieu Centraal calls the rules “an incentive” for producers to start using sustainable good materials. According to Van der Geest, the fact that this is not happening often has to do with the fact that recyclable plastic is expensive. “The entrepreneurs who work sustainably now do so based on their own vision and good intentions. But many mainly look at the costs.”

The packaging industry will not be happy with the new rules; they will have to invest. “A difficult problem that is not yet analyzed in the published documents, for example, is the combination between packaging and food waste, for example,” says Anton Brouwer of the packaging sector association NVGP. “Packing larger quantities simultaneously has a beneficial effect on the use of packaging material.”

Sufficient bags of mayonnaise and mini shampoo bottles for the time being, at least not yet a thing of the past. The European Parliament has yet to present itself on the proposal. That happens last year. After that, negotiations on the damaged law begin.