The Italian Ministries of the Environment and of Industry have recently introduced legislation that provides incentives to local councils to improve their collection of waste glass for recycling, by o…
The Italian Ministries of the Environment and of Industry have recently introduced legislation that provides incentives to local councils to improve their collection of waste glass for recycling, by offering a return on the costs involved in collection and processing. A decree of 27 January 2000 brings glass into line with other waste materials collected for recycling, for which local councils in Italy receive a subsidy for, according to the quality of the material recovered. For waste glass with impurities of up to 3%, local councils will now receive a subsidy of ItL 0.60 per kilo, while for waste glass with impurities of up to 5%, the subsidy will be ItL 0.30 per kilo. Glass collected by local councils with a higher level of impurity than 5% may be rejected. The amount will be paid jointly by Italy“s national glass consortium (Coreve) and packaging consortium (Conai). The new scheme replaces a previous law of 4 August 1999, which made the 8,000 local councils in Italy involved in waste recycling programmes wholly accountable for the costs of glass recycling. By reflecting the relation of recycling costs to the purity of the glass, the new legislation also provides incentives for local councils to ensure that glass is disposed of correctly. At the same time, Conai has doubled the environmental tax payable on glass packaging from ItL 0.5 per kilo to ItL 0.10 per kilo, in recognition of the high cost of separating disposed glass from other waste materials. The increase will come into effect on 1 April 2000 and both producers and importers of glass packaging will be required to apply the tax of ItL 0.10 per kilo to their sales invoices and in their declarations to Conai. The increased tax will give Coreve the resources to collect glass from local councils and send it for recycling to glassworks and a target of 1.1 million tons of recycled glass has been set for 2002. In 1998, 810,000 tons were recycled in Italy.