The European Parliament believes that the development of recycling processes should be encouraged and schemes should not only be viable and innovative, but must also be environmentally sound. Due to the problems associated with the chemical recycling of plastics, the process is not considered as falling within this category. As regards the management of packaging waste, Member States are expected to implement return, collection and recovery systems, which should remain accessible by all interested parties to avoid foreign import discrimination. All parties involved in the packaging chain should accept their share of the responsibility to minimise the environmental impact of packaging waste. In order to monitor the effectiveness of recycling schemes, annual community wide data needs to be collected.
