EU Commission proposal for a Directive on the reduction of the impact of certain plastic products on the environment released on May 28th aims to ban beverage stirrers used in vending and would require Member States to take measures to significantly reduce the consumption of other single use plastic items such as plastic disposable cups.

The full EVA position paper can be downloaded by clicking on the image below:

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The EVA would firstly like to state its support for appropriate measures to reduce the negative impact on the environment that unnecessarily discarded plastic waste can bring. We also welcome the objective to promote the transition to a circular economy with innovative and multi-purpose materials. However, the measures to tackle marine litter must be proportionate and carried out adequately and effectively.

The EVA notes that the proposed Directive places stringent requirements on producers of various single use plastics, bans a typical product used in the vending industry (beverage stirrers), and requires the reduction of consumption of plastic cups (mostly made of polystyrene) and even paper cups with a low percentage of polyethylene or bioplastic coatings.

These measures would have detrimental consequences on our industry and threaten an important channel of the food and beverage distribution.

We would like to emphasise that the vending and office coffee service industry places 90% of the total machines (4 million in Europe) within buildings of private and public companies, hospitals, schools, public administration and universities equipped with waste separation systems. We think that the measures contained in the Directive proposal will not follow the proportionality aspect as mentioned in page 7. The impact on the vending industry from these proposed measures would not be proportionate as it would unduly compromise the vast proportion of our business. Moreover, the impact on marine litter from vending is therefore negligible.

Since our industry is principally in-house and mainly dedicated to providing food and drink to employees on site, our position is that we consider that beverage stirrers and single-use cups specifically designed for our industry should not be in the scope of this Directive.