Risk that plastic declared as recycled not actually recycled
The ECA also found a ‘very high risk’ that recyclers are not processing the waste received, thereby casting further shadow on the reliability of data on recycled quantities.
The Waste Framework Directive requires member states to compile data on the amount of plastic packaging waste generated and the amount recycled. To count as recycled, waste must be reprocessed into products, materials or substances in order to be considered recycled.
However, the plastic tax legislation does not require checks to be carried out. The ECA found that neither member states, the Comission, or Eurostat conducted checks or audits to assess whether the plastic packaging waste received by the recyclers was effectively processed into other products.
The ECA conducted site visits to recyclers in three member states and witnessed conditions that suggest there was ‘no economic incentive’ to recycle waste.
“The authorities and recyclers in all three member states we visited said that, for many types of plastic packaging, recycling was not economically viable as virgin plastic was cheaper than recycled plastic. The [Producer Responsibility Organisations (PROs)] therefore had to compensate recyclers for receiving plastic packaging waste at their facilities to achieve the recycling targets set in the legislation. This increases the risk of recyclers having no incentive to invest further resources in processing waste received,” the report reads.
The report then adds a reminder that not processing plastic waste as required by the Waste Framework Directive and instead illegally shipping or disposing it constitutes an environmental crime.
What went wrong
In addition to insufficiently comparable and reliable data, the ECA said a number of factors prevented the ‘harmonised’ implementation of the plastic tax.
First, member states were late in transposing the legislation into national law.
Whilst the Commission ‘acted appropriately’ when member states failed to transpose key legal aspects into national law, it did not do so in a timely matter, the ECA said. It also failed to immediately analyse the effects of transposition-related issues on the calculation of the plastic tax.
Second, the definition of ‘plastic’ varied in different EU legal documents.
Member states reported confusion over the different definitions of ‘plastic’. The ECA found that three member states transposed the definition from the Single Use Plastic Directive instead of the required definition from the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive. The former excludes ‘natural polymers that have not been chemically modified’ whereas the latter does not.
Member states mentioned a combination of reasons why their forecasted and final data varied. These includes late changes in legislation, particularly regarding the calculation point for recycled waste.
The calculation point is the main measurement point, calculated at the recycling processing factory gate as input to the converting process (i.e. after the grinding, washing, and drying step). The introduction of this standard for measurement, as opposed to the output of sorting operation – which must estimate for loses – only happened in 2019, two years before member states presented their estimations for 2023. Consequently, only six member states reported recycling data using the measurement point required by the legislation.
Other factors included poor quality of the data compiled in the years used as a basis for the forecasts, and difficulty of estimating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on consumption patterns.
Payment adjustments
Despite the majority of member states making faulty forecasts and therefore defaulting on their plastic tax payments, the EU has a mechanism for retrieving payments once final data becomes available.
Each year, the Commission collects the amounts due from the member states that underpaid in proportion to their share of the EU gross national income, for distribution amongst those that overpaid.
In 2023, France topped net contributions for the plastic tax at €1,564 million. Germany followed at €1,423 million, Italy €855 million, Spain €686 million, and Poland €532 million. All other member states made contributions below €250 million, with Cyprus paying the least at €5 million.
Recommendations
The ECA concluded its report with recommendations for the Commission. First, to apply the lessons learnt from the introduction of the plastic tax, including identification of the key risks affecting the quality of data and sharing the information with the member states before the introduction of the new plastic tax cycles. Second, to improve data comparability and reliability by 2026. And finally, to mitigate the risk of waste sent to recyclers not subsequently being recycled.
