A major change since the municipalities took over the collection responsibility for packaging is that all costs for collection and recycling have been transferred from households to producers. Through the fees, all producers now take responsibility for:
- The costs of municipal collection and the ongoing expansion of property-based collection
- The costs of collection of packaging waste from businesses
- The costs of recycling
The packaging fees reimburse the municipalities for their costs for the collection of packaging waste from households and the businesses that have municipal collection. They also reimburse the municipalities for the information efforts they must make according to the packaging regulation.
The packaging fees therefore reflect the actual cost of approximately two billion kroner to collect and recycle all packaging in Sweden. That is why the fees have now increased sharply.
The principle is that each type of material must bear its own costs. There must be no cross-subsidisation between types of material. All types of material are handled competitively and the fees are the same for everyone.
What is new is that the fees are differentiated even more in different levels according to the percentage of the material that can be recycled. A package is considered recycled material if it is possible to use a certain weight percentage of the packaging material for the production of salable products. The higher the recyclability – the lower the fee.The fees thus become a control tool for increased recycling and higher quality.
Find out the current packaging fees for all types of material
The producers who are connected to NPA get access to Svensk Plaståtervinning’s new Site Zero facility. There, twelve plastic fractions can be sorted out for recycling instead of the previous five.
As more fractions can be recycled, there are three levels of fees for plastic packaging instead of the previous two. In circular recycling, the material maintains such a high quality that old packaging can be turned into new.The loop is closed and the need for new raw materials is reduced.
The differentiated fees therefore become a financial incentive to design circular packaging. They will also be an important tool to be able to meet the upcoming requirements that packaging must contain a certain percentage of recycled material. NPA has already started that work in order not to risk running out of recycled material for new packaging in the future.
This article is part of NPA Magasin