Evaluating the Single-Use Plastics Directive

As part of the Rethink Plastic Alliance (RPa), ZWE has co-drafted this response to the evaluation of the Single-Use Plastics Directive.

The Rethink Plastic Alliance calls to preserve and strengthen the Directive, which has already delivered clear environmental benefits, while avoiding a premature revision and instead focusing on improved implementation, monitoring, and regulatory stability.

Should a revision take place, we outline key priorities to reinforce its ambition and face the current gaps identified, including safeguarding definitions to prevent harmful material substitution, strengthening consumption-reduction and ban provisions, enhancing the prevention dimension of EPR by shifting funding toward reduction and reuse, and ensuring robust and credible rules on recycled content that promote genuine circularity, with ZWE contributing in particular to the latter two areas.