PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY IN ACTION - Latvijas Zaļais punkts

PRO EUROPE
PRO EUROPE S.P.R.L.
UNIFORMITY IN DIVERSITY
When and why was PRO
EUROPE founded
PRO EUROPE, the Brussels-based
“Packaging
Recovery Organisation Europe
s.p.r.l.”, was founded
in 1995 by Duales System
Deutschland (DSD) (Germany),
Eco-Emballages
(France), Fost Plus (Belgium)
and ARA Altstoff Recycling
(Austria). PRO EUROPE is
the umbrella organisation
of 33 national producer responsibility
systems engaged
in the selective collection
and recycling of packaging
waste. It provides a
platform for best practice
and information exchange
and the ongoing development
of packaging recovery
in Europe and beyond.
PRO EUROPE’s European members were established as
a direct response to the EU’s 1994 Directive on Packaging
and Packaging Waste. This directive requires
Member States to ensure that “systems” open to the
participation of economic operators are created for the
collection and recovery of packaging waste. One of
PRO EUROPE’s main goals is therefore to avoid trade
barriers in the sense that national and European waste
policy must not hinder the promotion of the free movement
of goods between Member States. However, the
organisation of packaging recovery can only function
throughout Europe if the individual states work together.
In this regard, an important goal of the organisation is to
harmonise the services offered by the national systems
and to develop packaging recycling and recovery to an
even greater extent.
What are the tasks of the organisation
The primary task of PRO EUROPE is to award the Green
Dot to qualified national collection and recovery systems.
In 1996, DSD granted PRO EUROPE the right to use the
Green Dot trademark in the form of a general licence
for the entire territory of the European continent (with
the exception of Germany and Russia) and Israel. The
main task of PRO EUROPE’s members is to organise
the introduction of adequate national collection systems,
particularly for sales packaging and subsequent recovery.
Since its foundation PRO EUROPE has become the
hub of a European network which organises exchange
of experience and know-how between all 33 systems in
26 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus,
Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany,
Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg,
Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania,
Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United
Kingdom), two candidate countries (Turkey and Croatia),
plus Serbia, Norway, Iceland, Ukraine and Canada.
There are also a number of working groups on specialised
topics such as best practices in collection, sorting
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