At the joint meeting of UKRPEC and the Coordination Council on the establishment of EPR organizations on May 21, a number of relevant issues for packaging manufacturers and goods in packaging were discussed.

In particular, the members of UKRPEC expressed concern over the long and non-transparent process of drafting the Law “On Packaging and Packaging Waste” in the Committee on Environmental Policy and Nature Management of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. They noted that most stakeholders, including responsible businesses, are excluded from the process of working on the draft law. Ignoring the position of manufacturers and paying excessive attention to the interests of service companies and secondary raw material collectors poses certain risks for the future of the Ukrainian economy in general and such sectors as packaging production, mass consumer goods, and food products in particular. Ukraine risks deviating from the European model of packaging waste management, which it previously committed to implementing under the Association Agreement with the EU.

Ukraine also risks leaving unresolved the issue of environmental pollution by household waste and the negative impact of landfills on public health, which are pressing issues for our society.

Thus, the draft law may include innovations that will lead to inflated and unrealistic recycling targets at the initial stage of implementing the extended producer responsibility system, excessive fragmentation of the EPR system by types of packaging, and will open the door to the possibility of acquiring the profitable status of EPR organizations, etc. The consequence of this may be the commercialization of the acute social problem of waste management, collecting for recycling only the most resource-valuable and commercially attractive waste, and losing mechanisms for managing the rest of the household waste.

To prevent the risk of distorting European approaches to packaging waste management, the members of UKRPEC decided to convey their position to the Head of the Committee on Environmental Policy of the Verkhovna Rada, Oleh Bondarenko, and seek opportunities to make the process of working on the text of the draft law “On Packaging” more transparent.

At the meeting, UKRPEC participants also reviewed the results of the Pilot Project for the separate collection of packaging waste “EcoGromada,” which they fund in the Bucha, Vyshhorod, Hostomel, Irpin, and Kotsiubynske united territorial communities. The results for the first four months of 2024 showed significant progress in the volumes of separately collected packaging waste and its recycling.

It was decided to expedite the procurement of containers to more densely cover the Project area with infrastructure for separate collection and to facilitate community residents’ access to separate collection of used packaging. As the Head of the UKRPEC Volodymyr Slabyi noted, the Pilot Project is a model of the extended producer responsibility organization, through which the legislator can verify that European laws and practices work well in Ukraine.

As previously reported, UKRPEC members voluntarily decided to create an Extended Producer Responsibility Organization before this requirement becomes mandatory under the law. At the meeting, the Coordination Council on the creation of the EPR organization identified a number of priority steps that need to be taken in the near future to successfully complete the EPR organization’s registration process.

Priority issues for the next Joint Meeting of UKRPEC and the Coordination Council have been identified.