👏 A big shoutout to everyone involved in moving circularity forward in Belgium!
👏 A heartfelt thank-you to our member Philip Buisseret, Secretary General of the Belgian Federation of Bottled Water and Soft Drink Producers (FIEB-VIWF), for making this visit happen!
The recycled PET from FILAO is then used by customers, e.g. by Sources Alma, to produce new beverage bottles for the Belgian market. Once used, these bottles are collected and sorted through the blue bag system managed by Fost Plus.
♻️ We learned that FILAO has an annual capacity of 40,000 tonnes of rPET, operates 24/7, and represents an investment of around €45 million.
♻️ Then, we visited FILAO to see how used PET bottles, collected via the blue bag scheme in Belgium, are converted into food-grade rPET for use in the production of new beverage bottles.
Once sorted, PMD is stored and then transported to the baler, where it is compacted and strapped to form bales of nearly 1 m³. Each bale weighs between 250 kg and 800 kg depending on the material. Once weighed, labelled, and stacked, these bales are transported by truck to the recycling facilities.
💡 Did you know that VALTRIS processes 50,000 tonnes of PMD per year? It annually sorts the contents of PMD bags from nearly 1.7 million inhabitants in the provinces of Walloon Brabant and Namur, part of the Province of Limburg, and the Charleroi region.
How is all of that done?
What an incredible learning experience it was!
🗑️➡️♻️ At VALTRIS, we saw how household beverage packaging from PMD bags (the recycling bag for plastic bottles, metal packaging and drinks cartons) is sorted in practice.
To see what this looks like on the ground, together with our colleagues from Natural Mineral Waters Europe and the European Fruit Juice Association, we went on a field trip to southern Belgium to visit VALTRIS sorting centre and FILAO, the country’s first integrated PET recycling plant.
♻️ When it comes to beverage packaging, our sector continuously invests in recyclability, collection and closed-loop recycling to ensure our beverage containers are recycled into new ones, becoming a valuable resource.
🔄 That’s circularity in action!
It’s Earth Day and for our sector it's another day of action to protect our planet & accelerate a more sustainable future.
The soft drinks sector is driving positive environmental change by reducing our carbon footprint, protecting water resources & making our beverage containers more sustainable.
This rule has no technical or scientific justification and, if eliminated, would enable our sector to advance our sugar reduction efforts and offer new beverages with no/low sugar.
Check out FoodDrinkEurope’s latest Data & Trends report
👉 www.fooddrinkeurope.eu/wp-content/u...
➡️ We remain increasingly focused on innovation, and this depends on EU policies that are innovation-friendly and remove outdated rules that hinder innovation. One example is the 30% energy reduction rule limiting the use of low-/no-calorie sweeteners.
Innovation is also what makes us stay competitive and continue to drive jobs and economic growth for Europe. Today, our sector supports over 1.8 million jobs and creates €242 billion in value across our European supply chain.
💡 Decarbonising our operations, protecting water resources and making our beverage containers more sustainable
🌍 That’s because we put innovation into action across all areas of our business. We keep innovating to support balanced diets and drive environmental sustainability by:
💡 Reducing the average sugar content in our soft drinks & developing new low- and no-calorie beverages to expand consumer choice
Did someone say today is World Creativity and Innovation Day?
We have a few facts worth recalling:
🌍 Our sector continues to be recognised as the most innovative in the food and drink industry, as reported by FoodDrinkEurope.
🔎 For more information and to register, please visit the event page 👇
events.theparliamentmagazine.eu/event/circul...
♻️ Prioritising high-quality and closed-loop recycling to scale circular models across industries and materials
♻️ Addressing market failures hindering sectoral targets
♻️ Foster an EU Market for secondary raw materials
Join us!
🗓️ 5 May
🕙 10:00 CET
📌 TownHall Europe, Brussels
Mark your calendars and start your countdown to the Circular Economy Forum, hosted by The Parliament!
Our Director General, Nicholas Hodac, will be joining the event & is delighted to give a keynote presentation on what the upcoming EU Circular Economy Act should deliver for our sector, including:
🔎 Check out the European Commission's report
environment.ec.europa.eu/document/dow...
More recent data suggests that many of the countries that hadn't yet met the 2025 collection target in 2022 and have since launched a DRS are now on track. This is thanks to our sector’s ongoing investments in collection & closed-loop recycling to make circularity of beverage packaging a reality.
This is based on 2022 data from EU Member States, as recently announced by @euenvironmentandclimate.ec.europa.eu
It was a great achievement at the time. Since then, further progress has been made, as several countries have introduced a Deposit Return System (DRS) since 2022.
🎯 2025 collection target of 77% met by 10 EU countries: Estonia, Poland, Finland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Croatia, Slovakia and Belgium
🎯 2030 collection target of 90% achieved by 6 EU countries:
Estonia, Poland, Finland, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden
♻️ Europe continues to grow its circularity champions: already by 2022, 10 EU countries had met the single-use plastic collection targets for 2025 and 2030. 👏
💡 UNESDA #FridayTip
Celebrate World Book Day a little early! 📘
These seven retreats let you explore the real-life locations that have inspired some famous books
👉 www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/artic...
📅 24 April
🕐 13:00 CET
📍 Hotel International, Zagreb
🔎 View the event programme and register
👉 euhealthforum.eu/en/
Looking forward to contributing to such an important discussion featuring:
🎤 Biljana Borzan, Member of the European Parliament
🎤 Mario Demirović, Director General, Croatian Customs Administration, Ministry of Finance
🎤 Lejla Dautović, Director of Innovation, Research & Development, Atlantic Grupa
🔹 highlight how the soft drinks sector has shown that voluntary industry actions work, such as reducing average sugar content in soft drinks, reformulating existing recipes and offering more low- and no-calorie beverages
🔹 explain why fiscal measures, such as soft drink taxes, have proven ineffective in driving real health improvements
🔹 share the European soft drinks sector’s view on the importance of strengthening collaboration between policymakers, industry, and the healthcare community to build policies grounded in robust science that are well targeted to deliver positive health outcomes