From 2023, plastic packaging will be collected uniformly in Austria. Ways to sort them well and recycle them are still being worked out.
Vienna is different. Styria too. So far, federalism has allowed different things to end up in the yellow bin here and there. While in the federal capital you dispose of plastic bottles and beverage cartons as well as cans, in Graz you throw in various “lightweight packaging”: everything from ketchup bottles to polystyrene packaging to wooden crates. That should change when the new Packaging Ordinance standardizes the regulations on January 1, 2023. “Then all plastic packaging throughout Austria must be collected in the yellow bag or in the yellow bin,” explains Anja Fredriksson from the Austrian Research Institute for Chemistry and Technology (OFI). There she is in charge of the area of sustainability and circular economy, in which “a small revolution” is looming with the innovation, as Michael Washüttl, head of the packaging and food area, puts it.
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