The government has maintained the current rates and coefficients of environmental fees for packaging for 2024
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After lengthy discussions, the government agreed to maintain the environmental fee for recycling packaging at the current level for another year. At the same time, the updated mechanism of extended manufacturer responsibility for product disposal began work on January 1. Experts note that in the coming year, industry players will not only have to agree on the size of the environmental fee, but also have time to build new recycling capacities.
The government has maintained the current rates and coefficients of environmental fees for packaging for 2024, follows from the decree signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on the last working day of 2023. Until the last moment, they were planned to be increased significantly, which in recent months has been the subject of disputes both with market participants and between the ministries themselves (see “Kommersant” dated December 13, 2023). Businesses were afraid of a serious increase in the price of packaging, which would lead to an increase in prices for final products, including food. A Kommersant source among product manufacturers says that maintaining the basic eco-fee rates is a necessary measure, since a compromise could not be reached. Now the problem of a double-digit increase in packaging costs is moving to the first quarter of 2025, but there is still no systemic solution.
President of the Soyuznapitki association Maxim Novikov says that maintaining rates at the current level is a step towards business, with which the rates proposed by the Ministry of Natural Resources were not discussed in advance. According to him, it is important to begin relevant negotiations with regulators as early as January in order to make the transition to new packaging recycling rules as harmonious as possible.
Proposals for new eco-fee rates were developed as part of the updated extended producer responsibility (EPR) mechanism, which involves a gradual increase in the mandatory packaging recycling standard for manufacturers and importers from 55% in 2025 to 100% by 2027. Companies can do this either independently or use the services of special companies. The mechanism was launched back in 2014, but since 2019 its reform has been carried out. The updated version was introduced as planned on January 1, despite the fact that market participants also had many questions about it. First of all, the business pointed out that it is not completely clear from the document who exactly is the subject of the EPR and who is considered the manufacturer of the packaging.
As Denis Butsaev, general director of the Russian Environmental Operator (REO), explained to Kommersant, the key difference was that responsibility for packaging disposal was transferred from product manufacturers to packaging manufacturers. “Those who were unable to fulfill the responsibility independently at their own facilities or with the help of a service provided by a recycler will be subject to payment of the environmental fee,” he noted. Importers of packaging will also be required to pay an environmental fee, but from 2026.
The head of Rupec, Dmitry Semyagin, believes that maintaining the basic eco-fee rates will give time to introduce new processing capacities, better develop the EPR mechanism and harmonize all by-laws. According to the expert, the resolution on environmental tax rates, which was supposed to come into force on January 1, directly contradicted the logic of the entire reform, and in some provisions, its own explanatory note. Thus, for all categories of polymer packaging, regardless of the material, the complexity of its processing, the number of possible processing cycles and demand in the recyclable materials market, a single rate was established – 12.4 thousand rubles. per ton. Rates, for example, for lead batteries were at the same level. At the same time, for paper and cardboard the rate was set three times lower and without increasing factors. Although the explanatory note to the same resolution noted both the difficulty of extraction and the low number of recycling cycles for paper packaging, which is incomparable with polymer packaging. According to Dmitry Semyagin, now there is a chance to return to the general logic of the reform, according to which environmental friendliness is determined not by the type of material, but by its retrievability and recyclability.
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