The European Commission's draft for calculating the proportion of recycled material provides for a ‘dual use’ conversion factor.
 

As reported by the specialist service Euwid, citing information from the French news service Contexte, the EU Commission has drafted a new implementing decision for calculating and verifying the recycled content of single-use plastic beverage bottles made from chemical recycling. According to Euwid, this should substantiate the Single-Use Plastics Directive and pave the way for the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR). The Commission's proposal also includes the ‘fuel-use-exempt’ approach for mass balancing. Only output material from chemical recycling that is not processed into fuels may be considered for calculating the recyclate content in the future. In addition, a conversion factor is now being proposed to take into account so-called ‘dual-use outputs’ when balancing recycled plastic content. This concerns, for example, intermediate products from chemical recycling processes such as pyrolysis oils, which can be processed into both raw materials for plastic production and fuels through further processing steps. The ‘polymers-only’ approach, which only takes into account recycled material that is used to produce new polymers, is, in contrast, advocated by the umbrella organisations of the recycling and waste management industry as well as by environmental organisations. According to the agenda, the new proposal is scheduled to be discussed at a meeting of the Technical Adaptation Committee (TAC) on 21 February 2025.
 
Sources:

• Euwid Recycling und Entsorgung 8/2025 (18.02.2025)
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