As a result of the increasing importance in quantitative terms, packaging is considered a specific waste stream, with its management being carried out in a differentiated way, through the creation of specific legislation, which introduces a co-responsibility for all stakeholders in the packaging life cycle.
The scope of packaging waste includes packaging from the municipal waste stream and packaging from the non-municipal waste stream, in this case, industrial and non-reusable packaging.
The municipal packaging waste stream is managed by separate collection, through voluntary deposition systems or door-to-door collection, as well as by the sorting of packaging waste that is withdrawn through infrastructures receiving waste from undifferentiated collection. These circuits are provided by the management entities, Sociedade Ponto Verde (SPV) and Novo Verde, in articulation with the multi-municipal and inter-municipal systems of waste management.
"Recycling" means any recovery operation, including the reprocessing of organic materials, by which the constituent materials of waste are again transformed in products, materials or substances for their original purpose or for other purposes but which do not include energy recovery or reprocessing of materials that should be used as fuel or in filling operations.
In recycling, as in packaging waste production, all wastes from the municipal waste stream are included, accounting for separately collected waste as well as packaging waste withdrawn through infrastructures receiving waste from undifferentiated collection.
The remaining quantities of packaging waste come from the non-municipal waste stream, where the responsibility for sending them for recycling lies with the producers of the waste itself, through waste management operators contracted and licensed for that purpose.
It is important to highlight that there are other packaging waste management circuits, namely VALORMED, which collects waste packaging of medical products, and SIGERU which collects packaging waste from plant protection products, whose contribution to the total quantity is negligible, but whose role in the diversion of packaging waste currently or previously containing products considered hazardous from the municipal circuit is essential.
This fact sheet concerns mainland Portugal and the Autonomous Regions of Madeira and Azores and shall be updated on an annual basis.
Until the implementation of the new targets established in Diretive 2018/852, those to be complied with are the ones set to be reached by 2011.
In 2017, packaging waste from the municipal stream accounted for about 36% of the total recycled quantity.
After a period of growth in the production of packaging waste, as of 2009, a decrease followed. From 2013 onwards, there has been a reversal of this trend.
The recovery rate (which includes recycling and energy recovery) reached maximum values in 2008-2009, 2013-2014 and in last two years has been increasing, reaching 65% in 2017, unlike the packaging recycling rate which declined in the last year to 55%.
In general, there was a decrease in recycling rates, with the exception of metal.
Since 2008, when a recycling rate of 88% has been reached, the recycling rate for paper/cardboard packaging waste has been declining, with trend reversals in 2011, 2013 and 2016.
The recycling rate of plastic packaging waste shows, in turn, a rising trend since 2004, except in the last two years when it showed a slight decline, standing at 35% in 2017.
The recycling rate for glass packaging once again did not reach the target, having actually decreased in 2017 to 49%.
The recycling rate for wood packaging waste reached 90% in 2017, above the target of 15% for 2011.
Portuguese Environment Agency – www.apambiente.pt
