ABSTRACT
Packaging is at the sharp end of environmentalism: it affects and involves everyone. It can be found in everyone's shopping bag, and it ends up in everyone's dustbins. Citizens' groups were the first to mobilise protest against a packaging system based on the infinite extraction and disposal of raw materials. The German Government, through its controversial Waste Packaging Ordinance, intends to make producers and retailers accept greater responsibility for product packaging, even to the extent of contributing to the process of collection and recycling. The packaging waste policies of individual member states have run in many different directions and the Commission recognised the need to tackle packaging waste on an EC-wide basis. The first priority is to reduce the quantity of material used in packaging, while maintaining sufficient product protection. A wide variety of plastics is available for an increasingly diverse and expanding set of applications, with packaging being the largest and fastest-growing market.
