As part of its commitment, CLE plans to establish an average 75% collection rate of plastic pesticide containers across EU Member States by 2025
CropLife Europe has today joined the European Commission’s Circular Plastics Alliance, a group of 300 organisations representing industry, academia and public authorities committed to delivering on the circular economy for plastics.
CropLife Europe Director General, Olivier de Matos, said: “It’s every sector’s responsibility to do what they can do to reduce, recover, and recycle plastics. By joining the Circular Plastics Alliance, we want to voice our commitment to increasing the collection of pesticide and biopesticide packaging and the availability of collection schemes across Europe. We also want to share our experience so far and discuss challenges and successes. We are looking forward to being part of the Circular Plastics Alliance and engaging with its members on how to reach the objective of 10 million tonnes of recycled plastic by 2025.”
Over the past 20 years, CropLife Europe has worked with national authorities, farm unions and licensed waste operators across Europe to establish and monitor collection, recovery, and recycling schemes of used plastic pesticide containers.
Since the first Container Management System was launched in Germany in 1994, programmes have now been established in 18 EU Member States. In 2020, CropLife Europe committed to ensuring that a container collection scheme is available in 100% of EU Member States by 2025 and establishing an average 75% collection rate of plastic plant protection product containers across the EU Member States by the same year. The collection rate currently stands at 65%.