European funds for recycling factories
Published in Apr 03 2024 at 12:20 pm of APETRI MARGARETA
These will be available through PNRR, with the funding call to be opened in the coming weeks.
The budget of the program is 220 million euros, projects can benefit from financing of up to 8 million euros.
The Minister of the Environment, Mircea Fechet, declared in Târgu Mureş that biodegradable waste would represent half of the total amount of waste produced in Romania, amounting to 3 million tons:
In other words, out of the 6 million tons, approximately 3 million tons are such waste. For this reason, before I worry about the shampoo bottle or other things (…), we have a real problem with how we manage the 3 million (tons, no) of biodegradable waste, in the sense that, on the one hand, we fail to ensure a separate collection of them as it should, in order to turn them into compost, something that happens in many member states. On the other hand, we struggle in many counties with conventional sorting facilities for the dry fraction.
The recycling factories would use the selectively collected waste for their transformation and valorization.
The European Directive 904/2019 on single-use plastic stipulates that this year companies will have to introduce 10% fewer containers and packaging on the market, in 2025 with 15% less, and in 2026 with 20% less.
Distributors of disposable packaging argue that environmental problems could be solved by using compostable or biodegradable packaging.
Alina Sagu, development manager of a company that imports biodegradable packaging:
We should have casseroles, compostable, biodegradable packaging. In the present period, the production of single-use packaging made of sugar cane is left a little in the shade, in favor of those made of polystyrene, because they are cheaper and everyone wants to offer cheaper in order to make more profit. We would like to raise a bit of awareness to pay more attention to compostable packaging. They disappear in a few months, the polystyrene one has a degradation process estimated at 850 years
She added that no compostable or biodegradable packaging is produced in Romania.
Author: Sanda Vițelar
