The problem with plastic is that a lot of it gets into the open environment, where it can lie or float around for decades. Symphony’s d2w oxo-BIOdegradable plastic is designed to reduce this problem by causing the plastic to biodegrade much more quickly, leaving no harmful residues.
This case in the General Court of the EU was a claim for compensation for loss suffered by Symphony due to confusion in the market caused by the wording of Article 5 of the Single-use Plastic Directive 2019/904, but the court declined to award compensation.
The case decides that:
- The EU can legislate without an environmental impact assessment
- The EU can circumvent all the safeguards against arbitrary legislation provided by the REACH Regulation
- The EU can disregard the advice of their own scientific experts – (The EU Chemicals Agency had said after ten months study that they were not convinced that microplastics are formed by oxo-BIOdegradable plastic).
- Industry standards, written by experts in the field to replicate conditions likely to be experienced by a plastic product in the real world are of no value (except in relation to industrial composting) See however https://www.biodeg.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Swift-evidence-to-BEIS.pdf .
A particularly disturbing feature of this case is that evidence paid for by the Defendants (such as the Eunomia Report, on which the court placed much reliance – as to which see https://www.biodeg.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/BPA-Comment-on-the-Eunomia-Report-2016-1.pdf ), is acceptable to the court, but evidence paid for by the Applicants “has little probative value.” (This point is made nine times in the judgment!). As professional witnesses and laboratories have to be paid, how is a claimant against the EU to adduce any expert evidence before this court which has any “probative value?
The court cited the difference between oxo-degradable and oxo-BIOdegradable plastic as defined by CEN TR15351, and did not rule that these two types of plastic are the same. If the court had accorded due weight to all the evidence, (including their own scientific experts ECHA, and including evidence which post-dated the Directive), we are confident that they would have found that Symphony’s d2w oxo-BIOdegradable plastic:
- Does properly biodegrade and does not leave microplastics behind. (Even Eunomia said “the debate around the biodegradability of [PAC] plastic is not finalised, but should move forward from the assertion that PAC plastics merely fragment, towards confirming whether the timeframes observed for total biodegradation are acceptable from an environmental point of view and whether this is likely to take place in natural environments”). As to timescale, nobody doubts that this type of plastic biodegrades much faster than ordinary plastic, but even if it took five or even ten years to biodegrade, that is a lot better than 100 years. As to natural environments see the Oxomar and Queen Mary University reports. https://www.biodeg.org/subjects-of-interest/agriculture-and-horticulture/the-marine-environment/
- Does biodegrade in compost (although we do not believe that plastic of any kind has any role to play in composting – See https://www.biodeg.org/subjects-of-interest/composting/ )
- Can be recycled without separation – See https://www.biodeg.org/subjects-of-interest/recycling-2/
- Does therefore deliver an environmental benefit.
We will consider an appeal, and will issue a full statement next week.
Refs
Statement provided by Symphony Environmental
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