The new law on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) will increase the burden on business from 4 to 10 times from next year, said Maria Zharkova, Regional Director for Corporate Affairs at Danone, during the international economic summit "Russia - Islamic World: KazanSummit 2021".

"In 2022, we have to live by a new law. It is about the obligations of businesses to collect and recycle the packaging they produce or pay the eco-tax," she said, explaining that in 2016 businesses were obliged to recycle 5% of their own packaging, in 2020 this figure rose to 20%.

Most players in the market, she said, preferred to pay the eco-tax until last year.

The situation will change from next year, when new legislation will come into force, according to which producers can choose one or the other: to recycle their own packaging, enter into contracts with recyclers or pay the ecological tax, says the representative of the company.

"The fundamental difference in the new rules is that now the producer will have to pay for each ton of packaging released into the market. If we are now talking about the eco-tax, it will increase the payments to the business from 4 to 10 times compared to what they were before 2022. This will all have an impact on production costs," Zharkova explained.

FROM A LINEAR TO A CYCLICAL ECONOMY

Dairy products manufacturer Danone today aims to move from a linear economy to a cyclical economy by 2030, Maria Zharkova shared her plans.

"Unfortunately, today we cannot report that we have succeeded in replacing and introducing recycled plastic in our packaging. But we have successfully replaced low-pressure plastic with PET (the most recyclable plastic) in a number of brands. We have moved away from PVC packaging. Now we are looking for an alternative to plastic tubing that is not recyclable, but so far everything we are trying, including paper, is not yielding the desired results. As for polystyrene packaging, we have set a deadline of 2025, when we plan to replace all the equipment," she said.

The company also now invests in the creation of local purification facilities, in order to reduce the load, which dairy processing enterprises put on the city infrastructure. She stressed that these projects are costly, for instance, the construction of such facilities in Kazan cost the company about 300 million rubles.

During her speech, she also raised the issue of imperfect legislation in terms of the work of entrepreneurs with charitable organizations, since today, if a company donates its products to charity, it must pay income tax, but if the company disposes of the same products, it will receive compensation.

ABOUT KAZANSUMMIT 2021

The Russia-Islamic World: KazanSummit 2021, an international economic summit of Russia and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member states, is taking place in Kazan on July 28-30. The summit aims to strengthen trade, economic, scientific, technical, social and cultural ties between Russia and the OIC member states.

The leitmotif of the Forum in 2021 is conscious consumption; the key topics of the business programme include partner finance, the halal industry, youth diplomacy, medicine, sport, creative industries, export development, entrepreneurship and investment. The event also hosts the Russia Halal Expo and the Mechanical Engineering Cluster Forum.

In pre-crisis 2019, the summit was attended by 3.5 thousand delegates from 72 countries and 38 regions of Russia. This year, more than 2,500 people from 60 countries are participating in the summit.

Made in Russia // Made in Russia

Author: Ksenia Gustova