Feve, the European Glass Container Industry, has welcomed the vote by the European Parliament's Environment Committee (ENVI) to amend the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) to promote full packaging recycling. However, the industry remains deeply concerned that intellectual property rights for packaging are not protected. The risk is that packaged products will start to look the same. Creative designs and iconic shapes will gradually disappear, and commercial value will be wasted because brands will no longer be able to stand out on shelves.
Adeline Farrelly, Secretary General of FEVE declared:
While our industry appreciates the Environment Committee’s recognition of proprietary packaging designs to some extent, it falls well short of our expectations. We welcome the acknowledgment of packed products with Geographical Indications and design rights but regret that Intellectual Property Rights as a whole are not protected. We fear this will result in standardized packaging and the gradual demise of brand differentiation. We are committed to ensuring that glass packaging solutions, agreed with our customers, are designed with the minimal necessary weight and volume. However, we believe this measure restricts creative designs and iconic shapes of bottles often reflecting cultural heritage products to be placed on the market in future. This will massively dent the economic value these products bring to Europe and beyond.
We are glad to see that the ENVI Committee adopted ambitious packaging waste reduction targets to mitigate against the risk that heavier but circular materials like glass are replaced by lighter packaging materials that are harder to recycle or reuse.
Separate collection and sorting are the prerequisite to guaranteeing high-quality recycling processes and to the fulfilling of the recyclability criteria. We therefore support the introduction of a mandatory 90% collection for recycling target.
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