Eight civil society organizations have asked the Government for fair funding for the reuse of packaging in Portugal, calling for at least 5% of producer responsibility contributions to be allocated to develop packaging reuse systems.
According to a statement released today, the organizations sent a letter to the Secretary of State for the Environment and the Secretary of State for the Economy, within the framework of the implementation of the European Regulation on Packaging and Packaging Waste (RERE).
The RERE sets mandatory targets for reuse and for reducing packaging, which Portugal will have to meet starting in 2030.
For the signatories of the letter there is a “clear principle of environmental justice” that should be enshrined from now, namely that the costs of the transition to reuse “should not fall, in the first instance, on the entrepreneurs and operators who seek to promote packaging reuse.”
They argue that those who place single-use packaging on the market export a large part of the impacts it generates to society and, in the case of plastics, burden the country by around 200 million euros per year due to non-recycled plastic packaging.
The situation creates an unfair competition with reusable systems and perpetuates the disposable model, they say in the statement, pointing to the importance of applying the polluter-pays principle.
Which, in practice, means redirecting a portion of the extended producer responsibility contributions to the infrastructures lacking for packaging reuse in Portugal.
In France the law already provides that the body managing the extended producer responsibility devote at least 5% of annual contributions to the development of packaging reuse solutions.
For Portugal, the signatories of the letter (associations, municipalities and circular economy entrepreneurs) propose allocating 5% of the extended producer responsibility contributions, earmarking that funding to the reuse system, the effective application of the polluter-pays principle, and the priority eligibility of shared projects, devices and infrastructures for washing, logistics and standardisation.
The RERE has been in force since 2025 and has applied since August. The Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) has been promoting clarification sessions since last year.
According to the targets to which the RERE binds Portugal, in the restaurant and take-away sector, final distributors should offer a reusable option as early as 2028 and, from 2030, seek to provide at least 10% of products in a reusable format.
For beverage packaging, the target is 10% reuse by 2030 and 40% by 2040. For transport and e-commerce packaging, the targets rise to 40% by 2030 and 70% by 2040, remind the signatories of the letter.
The overall targets for reducing the total amount of packaging placed on the market are set at 5% by 2030, 10% by 2035 and 15% by 2040 compared with 2018 levels.
