EU at risk of not meeting plastic recycling goals

The European Union may not meet its goals for recycling plastic, a report from the European Court of Auditors warned Tuesday.

“There is a significant risk that the EU will not meet its plastic packaging recycling targets for 2025 and 2030,” the report said, largely due to a lack of recycling of plastic waste.

“The scale of the challenge facing the Member States should not be underestimated.”

In 2018, the European Union set a goal to recycle 50 percent of plastic waste by 2025 and 55 percent by 2030.

Plastics have long been one of the hardest materials to recycle, but the report said the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the problem. 

“To meet its new recycling targets for plastic packaging, the EU must reverse the current situation, whereby we incinerate more than we recycle. This is a daunting challenge,” Samo Jereb, the member of the European Court of Auditors responsible for the review, said in a release. 

“By resuscitating single-use habits amid sanitary concerns, the COVID pandemic shows that plastics will continue to be a mainstay of our economies, but also an ever-growing environmental threat.”

Shifting standards from many of the countries that import plastic waste present another challenge. Following a 2018 decision from China, several other Asian nations that import the bulk of recyclable materials have adopted stricter standards, barring shipments that contain too many nonrecyclable materials.

“It is estimated that this could lead to a significant drop in reported recycling rates, from the current figure of 42 percent to barely 30 percent,” Jereb wrote.