Page 40 - FINAT Yearbook 2012

MARK MACARÉ REPORTS
PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND RECYCLING 2011/2012
At the beginning of 2011, FINAT appointed Mark Macaré as its Public Affairs Issues Manager at the secretariat. Since coming into office, Mark has been ‘tracking and tracing’ relevant legislative developments emerging from Brussels or national capitals, analysing their potential impact on our sector and helping FINAT preparing progress reports, drafting position papers and liaising with other stakeholder associations in Europe such as the Chemi Platform, CITPA, the European Recovered Paper Council, etc. Mark is also the Project Manager for Recycling and in this capacity has been managing the activities of the FINAT Recycling Committee. He reports about his areas of engagement during the past year-and-a-half.
REACH & CLIP
2011 started with a bang. With the first registration deadline under the REACH just behind us in December 2010, companies manufacturing or importing substances on the market were also obliged to notify substances to the Classification, Labelling and Packaging (CLP) inventory by the beginning of 2011. However, while these deadlines may since have passed, the need to stay on top of REACH hasn’t.
FINAT has published roadmaps to explain the duties of the members under these regulations well in advance of the deadlines, and is actively monitoring developments to ensure members are kept up to date. Through membership of the Chemi platform, the platform for downstream users of chemicals in manufacturing industries, FINAT has been actively involved with the review of REACH regulation, giving input to a number of studies that are being undertaken by the European Commission.
In addition, the Chemi platform succeeded in obtaining seats in two key committees monitoring the implementation and the revision of REACH. The first appointment was to the Directors’ Contact Group, which was set up in 2010 to monitor the progress and resolve issues in meeting obligations relevant to the registration of chemical
substances. The second appointment was to the Sherpa Group, which assists the DCG in proposing best adequate solutions. The appointments are crucial in securing that the needs of downstream manufacturing industries and FINAT members are sufficiently taken into account.
REVISION OF THE ANNEX OF THE PACKAGING & PACKAGING WASTE DIRECTIVE
While we have been monitoring developments in most relevant areas, we have been very actively involved in the revision of the Annex I of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive (PPWD). Having been informed of the upcoming revision by one of our members in 2010, FINAT quickly assembled members and national associations in order to coordinate a lobbying effort of our industry. The new proposal of DG Environment listed release paper for labels as packaging, thus defining it as packaging waste after use across Europe, and potentially impacting our industry with additional obligations and taxes. With the help of Hill & Knowlton and Brabers, FINAT issued a number of position papers to clarify the view of the self-adhesive label industry that release liner is part of the product instead.
No rock was left unturned in the process, with us (FINAT, national associations, leading stakeholder companies and our
professional lobby counsels) contacting National Ministries, National Representatives in the Committee, arranging contacts with MEPs and even setting up a face-to-face meeting with Mr. Falkenberg, the Director-General of DG Environment.
Throughout 2011, the proposal went through varies iterations, with the classification of release liners shifting several times. At the meeting of the so- called Packaging Committee at the end of 2011, the Member State represented decided not to adopt the Commission’s proposal, therefore leaving it to DG Environment to sort out this issue with the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. Although 2011 ended without a final proposal, we were pleased to learn this spring that in the final proposal that was submitted to the Council, the reference to release papers was deleted from the draft Annex.
RECYCLING PROJECT
Recycling has been acknowledged by the FINAT board as being one of the key challenges for our industry in the coming years, and as such, FINAT reinstated its Recycling Committee in the beginning of 2011 to drive recycling developments and increase the adoption of existing initiatives. After making an inventory of the main hurdles for the uptake of recycling, taskforces were established for two critical areas of success:
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FINAT YEARBOOK 2012 |