SAP Responsible Design and Production Helps Companies Manage Plastic Taxes in a Fragmented Environment

NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / January 17, 2023 / Plastic is everywhere - it's practical, necessary, and indestructible. It's so embedded in our daily lives that we don't even see it. From plastic-wrapped produce in supermarkets to containers for creams, lotions, pills, and medicine, most of it is used only once and then discarded into landfills, or worse.

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Despite its usefulness and in alignment with the aims of organizations such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the World Economic Forum, governments, businesses, and civil society are cooperating on ways to curb the waste and pollution it causes.

A First Step

As part of international efforts to fight climate change, for example, the European Union (EU) launched the European Green Deal in 2019, an action plan for transforming the economy from a linear one to a circular one that designs out waste and pollution. One key measure in tackling plastic pollution is the plastics tax applied to single-use plastic, plastic packaging, and microplastics.

Rather than a regional tax, however, the EU has mandated a national contribution from each of the 27 member states based on the amount of non-recycled plastic packaging waste it generates. The tax design varies greatly state by state, with some focusing on packaging in general and others on single use only. Some have different taxes for domestic or foreign-sourced plastic products. In short, member states are allowed to implement the tax in their own way, with their own rules and regulations.

The result is a an extremely fragmented landscape. Dealing with it requires the right strategy, tools, and expertise, especially in the areas of compliance and international supply chains. On January 1, for example, the Special Tax on non-reusable plastic containers took effect in Spain, imposing €0.45 per kilo of non-reusable plastic.

"This new tax presents a number of challenges for companies, not only because they will have to pay the designated tax, but because they will have to address this new process within the organization," says Maria Monasor, SAP sustainability principal EMEA South and a spokesperson for SAP Spain. "One of the greatest issues is the amount of information that needs to be collected and analyzed, all coming from different sources and, in many cases, from different countries, hampering collaboration."