As Europe moves toward the implementation phase of PPWR and the adoption of the Circular Economy Act, ensuring high-quality recycling becomes a defining policy priority. This panel will explore how robust Design for Recycling criteria, optimised separate collection systems, and the phase-out of landfilling can put the Act’s ambitions into practice. With steel already achieving top recyclability performance grades and demonstrating a closed-loop system, speakers will discuss how policy can better recognise permanent materials that deliver proven circularity. The debate will focus on aligning regulatory requirements under the Circular Economy Act and PPWR with real-world collection, sorting, and recycling performance.

The Circular Economy Act must clearly recognise and reward materials that demonstrate proven, high-performance and permanent recyclability.

• Design for Recycling and recyclability performance grading must become operational tools that guide packaging design and acknowledge materials already achieving grades A or B.
• Optimised, material-specific separate collection is essential to deliver the Circular Economy Act’s high-quality recycling goals; contamination should be minimised.
• Implementation of the Circular Economy Act must focus on practical enablers of circularity, including efficient recovery and proper sorting.

This panel examines how Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) systems must evolve to support a truly circular European economy. It will focus on two critical pillars: the net-cost approach and eco-modulation of fees. Speakers will discuss how harmonised, transparent, proportional, and non-discriminatory EPR fees—based on the real net-costs of collection & sorting as well as further processing to recycling, minus the proceeds of selling – are essential to ensure that recyclable materials are treated fairly. The discussion will also highlight the importance of recognising the financial value of steel scrap, which must be factored into net-cost calculations. The panel will then examine eco-modulation, emphasising why EPR fees must be material-specific, with revenues reinvested in the collection and sorting of the material from which they are raised. A properly modulated system should reward materials that can be recycled endlessly. This session will explore how these principles can make EPR systems more efficient, equitable, and aligned with Europe’s circular objectives.

The EPR reform must support high quality recycling, by taking into account the recycling costs and revenues for different types of materials.

• EPR systems must be harmonised, transparent, and proportional to guarantee fair treatment across packaging materials.
• Net-cost EPR fees must reflect the true cost of collecting and sorting while subtracting the financial value of the material, such as steel scrap. EPR fees must be non-discriminatory, incentivising performance and efficiency rather than penalising permanent materials.
• Eco-modulated EPR fees should reward materials that deliver high-quality through reduced fee levels. EPR fees must be material-specific: money collected from steel packaging must be used to support the steel recycling system, creating accountability and strengthening closed-loop recycling.