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Europe must urgently prioritise recycling its own plastic waste to safeguard the recycling industry’s future and avoid the risk of losing both jobs and autonomy, as investments will stop where competition is twisted. Prioritising recycled content from EU waste should be a feasible way to secure investments, maintain the EU strategic autonomy and protect jobs. Europe must act with urgency to secure a competitive and high-value plastics recycling industry.
Europe’s recycling capacity has stalled after years of steady expansion, with forecasts indicating zero net growth in 2025. At current pace, Europe risks falling short of its environmental goals, as recycling capacity would need to double by 2030 to meet recycled content targets. By the end of 2025, nearly one million tonnes of recycling capacity will have been lost since 2023 – an amount equivalent to the recycling capacity of the whole of France.
As Elvis Presley’s iconic song urges: it’s now or never. The EU faces a critical choice: act decisively today to tackle its plastic waste crisis with a strong plastic recycling industry or risk irreversible collapse. There is a contract of trust between the EU and its 450 million citizens. I firmly believe that people sort their plastic waste at home, trusting that it will be recycled nearby to the highest standards and reincorporated safely into the products they buy labelled as recycled.
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