Estonian lawmakers adopted an amendment to the Packaging Act designed to increase the recycling and reuse of packaging starting next year.
The law up until now prescribed recycling half of packaging waste. Under the amended law, 60 percent of packaging waste is to be recycled in the future. In absolute figures this means an increase of about 10,000 tons in recycled materials annually. Starting from 2010, 70 percent of packaging waste has to be recycled.
One of the reasons for increasing the amount of recycling is that producer responsibility organizations have coped fairly well with the current recycling obligation and are already collecting and reusing packaging at the required level.
For consumers, the amendment means above all better opportunities to dispose of packaging waste. As in order to comply with the higher recycling and reuse norms, more recycling containers need to be installed.
The amendment involves additional expenses to the tune of about 15 million kroons (EUR 0.96 mln) for packaging entrepreneurs.
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