First Focus Foundation

Petition to the European Parliament No.: 1516-08

We have submitted a petition to the European Parliament to change the European Law. The petition has been registered under the petition No.: 1516-08.

Petition for the remittal of a new law.

This petition is directed to the European Parliament and to the European Council.

The goal of this petition is to ask the European authorities to rearrange the existing laws and fees for programs for the disposal and recycling of packaging materials so that a substantial part of the packaging fees, which leave the European Union, is made available for certain goals.

This concerns the part of the fees, which every manufacturer, or European importer must pay for the disposal of the packaging of his products, because after the export of the goods the packaging does not end up in European recycling plants. Because these fees occur for the disposal of materials, they should be determined in a way that allows them to be distributed where the packaging is disposed of. This excludes fees of products, whose packaging ends up back again in European recycling plants.

The EU legislator has the possibility to create a law, which allows gathering of all fees from programs for the disposal, and recycling of export products, in order to be able to use the money to build recycling plants in the import countries, especially when the goods are intended to be shipped to Third World countries. The gathered fees could also be made available for the realization of millennium goals or research programs, which occupy themselves with environmental issues, as for example the "transition management" or "Cradle to Cradle" programmes.

Our environment knows no boundaries and the economically weak countries should under no circumstances be treated as a dump for European packaging.

For example, we would like to introduce to you some statistical information in order to convince you how important this law is:

  • Export article: Mineral water
    Import country: Senegal
    Packaging: One-way plastic bottle
    Quantity in year 2005 = 568,589,783 bottles
    Year 2006 = 544,643,802 bottles
    Year 2007 = 551,811,443 bottles
    September 2008 = 409,930,833 bottles

It is a well-known fact that the disposal of these plastic bottles is very difficult, and because the bottles in Senegal, like in many other countries, are simply burned together with other rubbish, without considering the effect this has on the environment, we would like to ask you to take our petition into consideration.


Signed:

Dr. Domenica Schiel
Rafael Schiel
First Focus Foundation

If you wish to support our case, please copy the content of the petition1516.txt file fill out the fields in the [ ] brackets and e-mail it to: petition@first-focus.org.uk

The First-Focus Foundation team thanks you for your support.