A mountain of waste

It has been said that there is nothing more dangerous than good intentions and if it hasn’t, it must be said. Examples are all around us and we just had a massive, stinky one drop out of Brussels. It’s about packaging.

Before the rant begins, if you want to familiarise yourself with the intricacies of the EU’s new packaging rules, do read Tammy Nemeth’s forensic examination, which she published as early as May. The short of it: the new packaging directive is so bad even Brussels admits it and encourages non-compliance. At this point, I’m not sure I need to add “Yes, that is correct”.

Starting August 12, the EU turned into a new world for any business that deals in goods that require packaging, which is all goods unless you get them from the neighbour, carrying your own multiple-use egg carton, which is what I do.

Dubbed the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, “it will help reduce waste, increase recycling, make food-contact packaging safer for the consumers by limiting harmful substances such as PFAS, and reduce our dependence on virgin raw materials. These are essential steps towards a truly circular economy.”

That’s according to the commissioner for the environment, who is also commissioner for “water resilience and a competitive circular economy”. Also according to her, “the Regulation will replace fragmented national rules difficult to navigate for economic operators in the internal market.” Here beginneth our joke.

As soon as the directive went into effect, the reports started pouring out about small — and not that small — business owners suspending all cross-border deliveries because they could not afford to comply with the new rules. Said new rules included, in all seriousness, an obligation to register with the authorities of every country you ship goods to, declare the packaging you are using (in each of these countries), and, for that final slap in the face, “Under these rules, I would need to appoint an authorized representative in every single EU country I send to,” as one small business owner put it.

“The cost is around €300 ($346) per country, per year ... these costs are simply not affordable,” that small business owner went on to say, while others started a petition against the new rules. The response? “No one needs to stop exporting products now. We encourage member states not to apply the new rules and not to impose penalties,” per some unnamed “senior EU official” cited by Die Welt.

Okay. So. Let us unwrap this package. According to the official news release from the Commission, the main purpose of the new directive is to reduce the amount of something called “per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances” in food packaging. Forever chemicals. Dangerous stuff.

Another of its purposes is to reduce the total amount of packaging that turns into waste in order to reduce waste in general. An undoubtedly noble undertaking — as noble as the undertaking of “replacing fragmented national requirements with a common set of EU rules that cover the entire packaging life cycle.”

Yet it appears that the “common set of EU rules” are creating a host of 27 different bureaucratic headaches for businesses trading with the whole EU, plus the need to hire 27 representatives for each of the member states it trades with, to handle the red tape and be held accountable for whatever they can be held accountable for.

Which is why that senior official advised everyone to not comply with the directive. Oh, and that same official was quoted as saying that “when the rules were agreed about two years ago, the member states and Parliament have unfortunately actually agreed on something that fragments the single market”.

In other words, the member states and the European Parliament sought to strengthen the single market but instead approved a directive that did the exact opposite in what has now become Brussels’ chronic self-destructiveness — unless it is something worse, namely, an almost complete detachment from reality for those in the decision-making group. I suspect the latter. Luckily, the detachment is not complete, as suggested by that talkative senior official.

The question, however, is whether businesses would dare not comply with the dud of a regulation. Because the directive masterminds can decide to start enforcing the penalties at any point — or, just an idea, cancel the directive “temporarily” and delay its entry into effect, like they did with the methane regulation. They won’t become an even bigger laughing stock than they are now, after all. It is practically — and I say this with dread in my heart — impossible.

But I have an idea on how to reduce plastic packaging. The huge German discount supermarket chains won’t like it, which is a bonus. Just ban those PFAS-tic plastic containers and mandate paper-based recyclable ones. Costs will increase and unless they want to lose their discount reputation (and customers) the chains would have to absorb them, and I think this is beautiful*.

Plastic waste would automatically go down, by a lot. If the Brussels club are feeling extra adventurous they might even ban plastic bottles and force all the soft drinks and water producers to use glass. It is that simple. Only then environmentalists will cry “Save the trees” and we’ll be back to the early 90s and saving the trees with plastic packaging.

*I have no love for businesses that suck the life out of farmers by cornering the market and forcing them to sell their produce at obscenely low prices. Also, they’re hellhole magnets for zombies, milling around and blocking aisles. Why do I still shop there? Because I am no stranger to vice and those hellholes sell my vices of choice more cheaply than alternatives. I am as guilty s everyone else. But I do buy most of my meat and vegetables from non-supermarket places. If only more of us could do it.

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