Luckily we survived the summer unscathed, we were able to resist the
record heat by consuming hectoliters of water and other liquidscontained in practical disposable plastic bottles and flasks, and we
were able to do it at rock-bottom prices. ---- For this we must be
grateful to the Meloni government, which in absolute continuity with
previous governments has postponed for the seventh time the entry into
force of the infamous “plastic tax”, scheduled for July 1 of this year.
The “plastic tax”, introduced by art. 1, paragraph 634, of the 2020
Budget Law (L. 160/2019), is a tax on the consumption of disposable
products made, even partially, of plastic and which provides for the
payment of 0.45 euros per kilogram of plastic material contained in such
products.
Obviously, all the subjects of the plastic supply chain have welcomed
the seven postponements that have occurred in these 4 years, starting
from Confindustria, passing through the various consumer associations
and arriving at the trade unions of the sector.
On the other hand, it is undeniable that the introduction of the
"plastic tax" can only lead to a consequent increase in the final price
of the goods affected by the provision: that is, to put it simply, it
will be yet another indirect tax paid by workers.
We must then add another aspect, on which the detractors of the "plastic
tax" are leveraging, and in particular the companies: the legislation on
waste, now collected within the so-called Environmental Code
(Legislative Decree 152/2006), provides that packaging producers must
pay a tax based on the type and quantity of products placed on the
market. This tax, called environmental contribution, is paid to CONAI
(National Packaging Consortium) and covers the costs of separate waste
collection, organized by the Municipalities, and of the recovery and
recycling of packaging waste. Therefore, one could say, companies are
right to protest against the "plastic tax", given that they already pay
a tax for the collection and recycling of plastic (to be fair, only for
plastic packaging, given that a basin or a comb go straight into the
unsorted waste, to then be taken to landfill or "thermal-to-energy",
i.e. incinerated). On the other hand, the Italian recycling industry
stands at significant numbers, which place it at the top of the list in
Europe in the recycling of packaging waste (about 71% of this becomes
raw material in all respects, replacing virgin waste in the various
production processes); precisely in order to protect the sector, the
Italian government has played a leading role in softening as much as
possible the agreement voted in spring in Brussels that sets objectives
for the reduction and reuse of packaging (in addition to banning the use
of some formats of single-use plastic packaging and introducing
restrictions on the use of PFAS for packaging in contact with food). So
will recycling save us from the invasion of plastic, which in addition
to having become an integral part of the urban and natural landscape
(just think of the islands of plastic in the ocean), has become a
constituent of our very tissues and organs, as reported in an article
recently published in the scientific journal Nature? (1)
Returning to the numbers of packaging recycling in Italy, despite the
aforementioned 71% being reached overall, the recycling rate of plastic
packaging would be around 50%: this is equivalent to saying that half of
all the plastic packaging that is put on the market escapes the
recycling circuit, is therefore burned and disposed of in landfill (in
the best case scenario), or dispersed in the environment.
In all this, a further consideration must be made: up to now we have
cited the numbers of recycling of only plastic packaging waste (bottles,
containers, bags, etc.). If we consider all the plastic placed on the
market, the share of that which can be recycled is really very low.
Unfortunately it is difficult to have reliable estimates, there is only
one report from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from
2018(2): out of a total of more than 35 and a half million tons of
plastic generated for consumption, only 3 million tons were recycled,
that is, just under 9% of the total.
The data that emerges from this report should perhaps push us to ask
ourselves a few more questions about the current waste management and,
more generally I believe, about the production and consumption model
known as capitalism.
Continuing to believe that the ongoing environmental disaster is only
the result of unsustainable individual choices is just smoke and
mirrors, first of all because often and willingly sustainable choices
are also more expensive and not everyone can afford them.
This does not mean refrain from trying to make our territories more
livable, to fight for more efficient and sustainable urban waste
management services (perhaps even creating forms of coordination with
workers in the sector), to develop new forms of consumption, more
sustainable from a social, environmental and economic point of view,
such as the Solidarity Purchasing Groups (GAS). But all this must be
framed in the broader project of overcoming the most harmful of
pollutants, capitalism.
Note:
1)Microplastics are everywhere — we need to understand how they affect
human health. Nat Med 30, 913 (2024).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-02968-x
2)EPA, Advancing Sustainable Materials Management 2018 Fact Sheet,
dicembre 2020
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-01/documents/2018_ff_fact_sheet_dec_2020_fnl_508.pdf
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/wpAL
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