EPRO Amsterdam General Meeting

Last week the winter 2025 EPRO meeting took place in Amsterdam with RECOUP in attendance as the UK representatives. With 18 countries in attendance it was a really useful opportunity to share latest local and international challenges and solutions for plastic circularity. There were also updates on the Dutch system from our friends at Verpact. They play a central role in making the packaging chain in the Netherlands circular. Operating under the legal producer responsibility for packaging (EPR), they ensure that packaging is collected and recycled in a smart and efficient manner, including through a deposit system. They also assist producers and consumers in making circular choices and promote reuse.

European plastic and plastic recycling market issues were key for most attendees, with a general view that not enough is being done by policy makers to support the sector. Some key debates were held around the role of chemical recycling, pre and post consumer sorting, and recycled content incentives linked to PPWR targets over the next 10 years. This was followed by a trip to AEB Amsterdam – a very large residual waste sorting facility which is producing baled rigid and soft plastic outputs for recycling.  The session was finished with updates on waste shipment regulations, the Verpact science knowledge and insight (SKI) work – which resonates well with our own work on technical recyclability of packaging and products, and updates on agricultural plastic recycling schemes, where the UK is sadly lacking in co-ordination and scale compared to others.

We had positive additional discussions with Belgium, Netherlands, South Africa and Canada regarding potential opportunities in 2026. EPRO remains an important connection for RECOUP, and allows the team and our members to access good information and plastic circularity insights from 25 countries across Europe, North and South America, Africa and Australasia.   https://epro-plasticscircularity.org/members/ . As part of the meeting, Stuart Foster stepped down as EPRO director after 14 years, and will be replaced with Steve Morgan, RECOUP’s Head of Policy and Infrastructure for the next 2 year period.