Producer responsibility for packaging postponed

CEO of VANA, Marianne Roed Jakobsen, says: "Concretely, this means that the payment obligation for the companies is pushed forward by six months. Practically, it means that they save approx. one billion kroner," and continues: "For us as a Producer Responsibility Organisation (PRO), it means that we have a little more time to get all procedures in place. However, at the same time we are weighed down by the fact that we do not yet know the exact timetable and that we still need to get some key frameworks in place, such as the environmentally graduated contributions, the basic service level for which municipalities must be compensated, and the rules for how commercial waste will be compensated. Therefore, we continue our work into a partially unknown area."

VANA's Chairman of the Board and Deputy Director of the Confederation of Danish Industry, Karin Klitgaard, says: "It is clear that it gives the individual company a little more time to get in place. Fortunately, many are already up and running – but the reality is also that when we are informing about the producer responsibility, there are still some who are yet not quite on top of the situation. The truth is that the vast majority of people who sell products on the Danish market are covered by this. At the same time, there are many things about the legislation that are still not in place. The postponement provides just six more months to fine-tune the things that could otherwise only be half-implemented or incomplete. On the other hand, you could also say that now we do not need any more delays, because it has been a really long time coming."

Marianne Roed Jakobsen, CEO of VANA, explains the reason for the postponement: "I have been told that the European Commission forwarded a letter to Denmark this summer. The letter contained information about not implementing new rules or legislation in the individual EU country that may conflict with something that is being negotiated at EU level. In this case, it is the negotiations on the new packaging regulation that conflicts with the implementation of the producer responsibility. Thus, it is the European Commission that has asked Denmark to postpone the implementation by six months.

Read the full article in WasteTech here (for subscribers).