In September 2022 the European Commission published a Regulation on recycled plastic materials and articles intended to come in contact with food (2022/1616), and it came into force in October 2022.

The regulation focuses on decontamination and requires the demonstration of three levels for safety: recycling technology, recycling process, and recycling installation.

On January 31th, 2024 a draft scientific guidance on criteria for evaluating and preparing post-consumer mechanical PET recycling process was endorsed by the EFSA panel for public consultation. The draft guidance refers to processes related to the recycling technology ‘mechanical PET recycling’, as defined in Table 1 of Annex I of Regulation (EU) 2022/1616.

The draft aims to set the evaluation criteria and the EFSA’s approach to the scientific evaluation to assess the decontamination capability of the recycling process, while including all details in the petition dossier for the evaluation of the recycling process.

The public consultation was launched by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) on February 7, 2024. All the comments were due March 20, 2024.

 IBE-BVI members advantages:

Click here to get the draft of the guidance.