2.1: Recycling and VAT rates: Meet Europeans in search of sustainable solutions

CitizenCentral

Government

5 • 1 Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2022

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

CitizenCentral returns for a second season! Featuring ‘ReturnthePlastics’ and ‘GreenVAT’ ECIs -- Join us as we talk with two citizen initiatives’ organisers taking different approaches to sustainability and consumer behaviour, as well as three climate and sustainability experts across the EU. Omar Pérez of the ‘ReturnThePlastics’ initiative explains how this group of organisers aim to replicate recycling systems that already exist in several EU countries. As the results of existing systems start to show, their idea is to install an EU-wide deposit scheme to recycle plastic bottles, using reverse vending machines in supermarkets. A big question remains – who should pay for this system? Brigitta Hartmann represents the ‘Green VAT’ initiative, which calls for tax reductions on organic, sustainably produced or environmentally friendly products in Europe. The goal is to both give consumers more choice and encourage companies to rethink how products are produced. But, one might ask, would there still be a tax base if all the products become green?

Transcript

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0:00.0	That Europe finds itself at the front of the storm is not something new.
0:14.0	The world of tomorrow will be a different place.
0:18.0	It's good that Europe is ambitious in climate policy. We should be ambitious but also realistic.
0:22.6	The task is to learn to live within the boundaries Mother Earth has given us.
0:27.6	Only united we can defend our values, we can protect the interests of our citizens. Hello there and welcome to Citizen Central, the podcast series about the first transnational democracy instrument in the world, the European Citizens Initiative.
0:56.2	Celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2022,
1:00.2	the ECI gives people the chance to pitch their own EU policies
1:04.5	to the European Commission by gathering 1 million signatures from seven EU states.
1:12.6	My name is Manix Riccariqqqqa Kawi and on Citizen Central I'll be finding out how the ECI works,
1:20.3	how you can launch or support an initiative and what drives people to give up their time
1:25.9	and energy for a cause they care deeply about?
1:30.8	In today's episode, we will kick off in Brussels where Omar Perez is asking the Commission
1:36.8	to create a European scheme of plastic bottle return compensation, with his ECI return the plastics. Then we will head over to Berlin
1:46.5	to meet Brigitte who with her ECI, the Green VAT, is asking the commission for a tax
1:52.9	improvement plan for sustainably produced goods. Plastic is everywhere, probably a top reason for the first ECI we will discover in today's chapter.
2:05.6	Omar Perez, thanks for joining us on Citizen Central and please tell us a little bit more about yourself.
2:11.6	Thank you very much, Manix. Big pleasure to be here. My name is Omar Perez. I'm representing the Return the Plastics Initiative.
2:23.3	The main motivation is the current state of plastic pollution and how it's affecting not only the environment, but also our everyday life with the presence of microplastics and the mismanagement
2:28.9	of plastic in general. So what are you asking the European Commission for? The implementation of an EU-wide deposit system to recycle plastic bottles and to install
2:38.0	this reverse vending machines pretty much in all supermarkets that will allow consumers to
2:44.0	bring their plastic bottles to the supermarket, just like introduce them in these machines,
2:48.0	and just to get a little voucher out of it. Omar, why plastic bottles?
	...

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