Reduce products and packaging in virgin plastic - that is to say not recycled - by at least 20% by 2025. This is one of the ambitions of the European plastic pact launched on Friday. This public-private coalition rallies fourteen European states, around thirty large companies such as Nestlé, Suez or Carbios, and several NGOs, or seventy signatories.
This pact - the term is not chosen at random, after the "green pact" of Ursula von der Leyen - also aims to increase by at least 25% the capacity for collecting and recycling plastics and to stimulate use of recycled plastics in packaging at a rate of at least 30%.
A platform has been created to allow participants to exchange information on technologies. Today, for the food industry, it is cheaper to produce packaging from virgin plastics than to use recycled plastics.
" Presenting this pact at this time is not trivial, " said Secretary of State for Ecological Transition, Brune Poirson. Initiated by France, Denmark and the Netherlands, the project wants to provide an impetus at European level where there is a certain frustration about the speed of action. However, there is no contradiction with the action plan for a circular economy that the European Commission will present next week, we are assured. The pact must make it possible to go faster. An appointment is made in a year, for a first assessment.