DE: Possible mandatory single-use plastic bag fee

27 January 2016

Germany's Federal Environment Agency (Umwelt Bundesamt or UBA) has said that if German retailers fail to implement fees for single-use plastic bags voluntarily, the government should require them to do so by decree.
UBA said that on average German consumers use 71 single-use plastic bags annually, but the country will need to reduce per capita bag consumption to 40 bags by 2025 in order to meet EU requirements established by the recently amended Directive on Packaging and Packaging Waste. Some industry groups have argued that Germans recycle most of their single-use plastic bags so a bag fee or ban is unnecessary (Recycling Laws Update Bulletin, 25 January 2016).
Click here for the UBA announcement (in German).
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