EY Romania: Companies more rigorously approach waste reuse after control tightening

Tighter controls compel businesses to a more rigorous approach to waste reuse, a process requiring consistent coordination, considers Raul Pop, senior manager with EY Romania's Climate change and Sustainability Service. 

"In an exceptional move, the visibility of packaging waste reuse has significantly increased in the past three years. (...) Some companies, mainly those engaged in technical talks with central authorities - operating in the food industry, the FMCG industry a.s.o. - have been one step ahead the other players and were the first to learn about the system's shortcomings, therefore starting to remedy the operational aspects related to in-company organization. (...) Unlike other liabilities, taxes charged for package marketing emerge, grow or decline, and can be optimized in all departments involved in the processes and physical flows of a company that markets packaged goods. This requirement takes shape right from the product design stage, beginning with the identification of the suppliers and the way they package the delivered goods and materials, and goes throughout the production process, storage, handling, packaging or re-packaging, transport, delivery, marketing. (...) This is where the main difficulties related to determining, keeping record and optimizing charges for the packaging-reuse requirement arise from. This is a highly branched out process and it is paramount that it is consistently coordinated and backed by company management," Pop explained. 

In his view, the obstacles to the companies' efforts towards a performing waste reuse management include: pledging leadership at the company's top management, difficulties in correlating law requirements, updating processes, forms, working practices according to legislative amendments, correctly and comprehensively identifying package flows in the market and the failure to observe time constraints for aggregating and submitting the monthly report to the Environmental Fund Administration (AFM). 

EY released this April a survey on 'Packaging - risks and opportunities', shining a light on developments in the packaging industry.