As Elvis Presley’s iconic song urges: it’s now or never. The EU faces a critical choice: act decisively today to tackle its plastic waste crisis with a strong plastic recycling industry or risk irreversible collapse. There is a contract of trust between the EU and its 450 million citizens. I firmly believe that people sort their plastic waste at home, trusting that it will be recycled nearby to the highest standards and reincorporated safely into the products they buy labelled as recycled. Allowing recycled content from countries with different standards than the EU to count the same as material processed here, breaks the contract of trust because EU waste will end up being incinerated while imports are reincorporated in EU products.
The solution is simple: for packaging produced or filled in the EU, recycled content should, wherever feasible, come from EU waste to count toward targets. We must prioritize recycling our own waste before recycling waste from countries outside the EU. Will the public understand that their home‑sorting efforts are not creating local recycling jobs or capacity, but are instead being displaced by imported material that is nonetheless counted as “recycled”?
Tomorrow will be too late. So, what will we do?
Shall we protect the jobs, investments, and industrial capacity that underpin our circular ambitions — or shall we watch them disappear under a tide of unfair competition? The Single-Use Plastics Directive (SUPD) and its Implementing Act are a moment of truth. Acting decisively now will secure a truly European circular economy for plastics. By delaying or making it vague, flexible and ambiguous, we risk losing an industry and a generation of industrial opportunity.
Without urgent intervention, Europe’s ambitious goal to double recycling capacity by 2030 will remain out of reach, future investments in Europe will dry up
Cheap imported recycled plastics, produced under looser safety, environmental and non-EU labor standards, flood the market and undermine Europe’s recyclers. Most of the time these imports come from markets where there is no circular economy or reincorporation of recycled content in products. Without urgent intervention, Europe’s ambitious goal to double recycling capacity by 2030 will remain out of reach, future investments in Europe will dry up, and vital jobs within the entire value chain will be lost and announced projects risk never materialising.
Consider Eastman’s planned €1 billion molecular recycling plant in Europe, which could create hundreds of direct jobs and thousands of indirect jobs, with the capacity to recycle over 100,000 tons annually: projects like this are precisely the kind of strategic investments that will be shelved if the EU doesn’t prioritise that its own waste counts first toward recycled content targets in the EU. The result would be fewer facilities in Europe, fewer skilled jobs, weaker technological leadership and a Europe more dependent on imports.
Where we want to be in 2030
How can Europe meet its ambitious goals when mechanical recyclers are disappearing because they cannot compete? Or when chemical recycling projects are being paused?
We cannot wait to act against unfair competition and to miss the initial intention, which is to recycle our own waste. The initial goal is to resolve our EU plastic waste crisis, not third countries’. This is not a call to close borders or ban imports; it is a call for fairness, transparency and consumer protection. Cheap imported recycled material can currently be treated the same as EU produced recycled content for regulatory and procurement purposes, even when produced with very different environmental, safety and labour standards. This creates a perverse contest: two runners receive the same medal while one runs on a rugged mountain trail and the other on a smooth paved road! If imported recycled content enjoys equal treatment without credible verification, local recyclers face an uneven playing field and consumers face uncertainty—especially in sensitive applications such as food contact.
If imported recycled content enjoys equal treatment without credible verification, local recyclers face an uneven playing field and consumers face uncertainty
Delay and inaction will cost jobs, investments and strategic autonomy. Imagine 2030 with domestic recycling plants shut or never built, circularity targets routinely missed, and the EU dependent on opaque imports for “recycled” material — bottles on our supermarket shelves labelled “contains recycled plastics from 10,000 km away” while our waste is incinerated or landfilled at home. Or picture the alternative: by 2030 recycled content is generated from European waste streams collected and processed here, jobs and investments return, consumers trust provenance labels, and the EU leads in high‑value circular technologies. If the Union chooses to act now, that future is within reach.
Starting with regionality, verification and enforceable policy
If we take the example of the Single-Use Plastics Directive (SUPD) Implementing Act, we welcome the European Commission’s steps to recognize chemical recycling and to establish a credible mass balance methodology. We strongly support the mass balance fuel-use excluded approach as the appropriate method to calculate recycled content from chemical recycling processes. Endorsing this approach provides a practical, science-based pathway to recognise chemically recycled material to material while preserving traceability and accountability. Equally, a fuel-use excluded allocation method is the right framework to ensure recycled outputs are directed toward meeting recycled content targets rather than being diverted to energy uses.
But technical recognition alone won’t save Europe’s recycling industry; we must pair it immediately with regional safeguards, strict verification and enforceable rules. The pragmatic first step is to add the principle of “Recycling of proximity” in legislation and to do it now. Trade-compatible measures, including a well-crafted “mirror clause”, can ensure imports meet equivalent standards, but above all, verification is essential: independent third-party audits are nonnegotiable to prevent greenwashing and restore market trust.
All this cannot be labeled as protectionism; it is common sense: safety for consumers, fairness for industry and strategic sense for Europe’s future. If the EU values the circular economy it has legislated for, it must align regulations, procurement, trade and enforcement so European waste is recycled in Europe where feasible, investments are bankable, jobs are created, and consumers can trust labels. If it is matched immediately by regional safeguards and rigorous verification, the Commission’s work on chemical recycling and mass balance can be a cornerstone of that transition.
The clock is ticking. It’s now or never.
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