Subject matter and scope
1. This Regulation is a specific measure within the meaning of Article 5 of Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004.
2. This Regulation lays down rules for:
(a)
the placing on the market of plastic materials and articles falling within the scope of Article 1(2) of Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004, containing plastic originating from waste or manufactured therefrom;
(b)
the development and operation of recycling technologies, processes and installations, to produce recycled plastic for use in those plastic materials and articles;
(c)
the use in contact with food of recycled plastic materials and articles and of plastic materials and articles which are intended to be recycled.
3. This Regulation shall not apply to the use of waste to manufacture substances included in the Union list of authorised substances in accordance with Article 5 of Regulation (EU) No 10/2011, and to manufacture substances subject to Article 6(1), (2), and (3)(a) thereof, when intended for subsequent use in accordance with that Regulation.
Definitions
1. For the purposes of this Regulation, the definitions in Article 3 of Regulation (EU) No 10/2011 and the definitions in Article 3 of Regulation (EC) No 2023/2006, shall apply.
2. For the purposes of this Regulation, the following definitions also apply:
(1)
‘waste’, ‘municipal waste’, ‘waste management’, ‘collection’, ‘re-use’, ‘recycling’, and ‘non-hazardous waste’, as laid down in Article 3 of Directive 2008/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 9 ) ;
(2)
‘food business’ and ‘food business operator’, as laid down in Article 3 of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 10 ) ;
(3)
‘competent authorities’, and ‘audit’, as laid down in Article 3 of Regulation (EU) 2017/625.
3. The following definitions shall also apply for the purpose of this Regulation:
(1)
‘recycling technology’ means a specific combination of physical or chemical concepts, principles, and practices to recycle a waste stream of a certain type and collected in a certain way into recycled plastic materials and articles of a specific type and with a specific intended use, and includes a decontamination technology;
(2)
‘decontamination technology’ means a specific combination of physical or chemical concepts, principles, and practices part of a recycling technology which have as primary purpose to remove contamination or to purify;
(3)
‘recycling process’ means a sequence of unit operations that is intended to manufacture recycled plastic materials and articles through pre-processing, a decontamination process, and post-processing, and which is based on a specific recycling technology;
(4)
‘recycled plastic’ means plastic resulting from the decontamination process of a recycling process and plastic resulting from subsequent post-processing operations and that is not yet transformed into recycled plastic materials and articles;
(5)
‘recycled plastic materials and articles’ means food contact materials and articles in their finished state, and that are made either fully or partly of recycled plastic;
(6)
‘recycled content’ refers to the amount of recycled plastic directly resulting from the decontamination process of a recycling process contained either in further post-processed recycled plastic or recycled plastic materials and articles manufactured therefrom.
(7)
‘pre-processing’ means all waste management operations carried out to sort, shred, wash, mix or otherwise treat plastic waste in order to make it suitable for the decontamination process;
(8)
‘plastic input’ means the plastic materials resulting from pre-processing which are entered into a decontamination process;
(9)
‘decontamination process’ means a specific sequence of unit operations which together have as primary purpose to remove contamination from plastic input in order to make it suitable for contact with food, using a specific decontamination technology;
(10)
‘incidental contamination’ means contamination present in plastic input originating from food, from plastic materials and articles intended and used for contact with food, from their use or misuse for non-food purposes, and from the unintentional presence of other substances, materials and articles due to waste management;
(11)
‘post-processing’ means all unit operations subsequent to the decontamination process by which its output is further polymerised, otherwise treated, and/or converted, resulting in recycled plastic materials and articles in their finished state;
(12)
‘recycling installation’ means the equipment operating at least a part of a recycling process;
(13)
‘decontamination installation’ means specific equipment operating a decontamination process;
(14)
‘recycling facility’ means a location where at least one decontamination installation is located;
(15)
‘recycling scheme’ means an arrangement between legal entities to manage the use, separate collection and recycling of plastic materials and articles with the objective to limit or prevent their contamination in order to facilitate their recycling;
(16)
‘recycler’ means any natural or legal person who applies a decontamination process;
(17)
‘converter’ means any natural or legal person that carries out one or more post-processing unit operations;
(18)
‘unit operation’ means a basic operation that is part of a process, and applies a single transformation to its input, or more transformations if they occur in conjunction;
(19)
‘manufacturing stage’ means one or more sequential unit operations and which are followed by a quality assessment of the material resulting from that stage;
(20)
‘batch’ means a quantity of material of the same quality, and produced using uniform production parameters at a certain manufacturing stage, stored and contained to exclude mixing with other materials, or contamination, and designated as such by a single production number.
Suitable recycling technologies
1. A recycling technology shall be considered suitable if it is shown to be capable of recycling waste into recycled plastic materials and articles that comply with Article 3 of Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004 and are microbiologically safe.
2. Recycling technologies shall be distinguished based on the following properties:
(a)
the type, mode of collection and origin of the input material;
(b)
the specific combination of physical and chemical concepts, principles and practices used to decontaminate that input material;
(c)
the type and the intended use of the recycled plastic materials and articles;
(d)
the need or absence thereof for the evaluation and authorisation of recycling processes applying that technology, and the criteria therefore.
3. Suitable recycling technologies are listed in Annex I. Annex I may be amended in accordance with Articles 15 and 16.
4. Where the capacity to achieve sufficient decontamination of recycling processes that use a certain recycling technology depends on the precise specification of the input, the detailed configuration of those processes or on the applied operating conditions, and when that specification, configuration or those conditions cannot be laid down in simple rules at the time that technology is established as suitable, each recycling process using that technology shall be individually authorised by the Commission in accordance with the procedure laid down in Chapter V, and in particular Article 19(1) thereof (‘the authorisation’).
5. Annex I shall specify whether for a recycling technology individual recycling processes are to be authorised.
6. Any recycling technology that has not been subject to a decision on its suitability in accordance with Article 15 or 16 shall be regarded as a novel technology for the purpose of this Regulation.
