June 12, 2023
On 6 June we held our 7th ISCC Technical Stakeholder Meeting – Circular Economy and Bioeconomy, with more than 450 participants joining from around the world – again a new record high! We thank you all for your continued and growing interest in our work, in the market developments and the perspectives of our stakeholders.
The first two presentations of the day focused on regulations: the European Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) was presented by Dr. Wolfgang Trunk of the European Commission (EC), while Craig Cookson of the American Chemistry Council spoke about chemical/advanced recycling and upcoming regulations in the U.S. market.
Annick Meerschman presented Cefic’s view on mass balance and the fuel use exempt / energy excluded allocation method. She pointed out that mass balance is already a widely used chain of custody option in other sectors, such as biofuels, cocoa and coffee, and is also urgently needed for chemical recycling, while ensuring that energy recovery is excluded from the process.
As we move from a linear to a circular economy, there is an urgent need to rapidly expand complementary recycling solutions such as mechanical and chemical recycling. Through this joint letter, we are making a strong and collective plea.
Next, ISCC Director Jan Henke provided an update on ISCC PLUS, 2023 development highlights to date, work in progress, and an outlook for the second half of the year. He furthermore shared, that ISCC will spend nearly a week in the U.S. soon, with a new onsite ISCC Licensing Training happening on 13 November, the Regional Stakeholder Meeting – North America taking place on the 14th and an onsite ISCC PLUS training from 15 – 16 November, all in New Orleans. We warmly invite you to spend these days with us! Dr. Stefan Gärtner of Meo Carbon Solutions went into a bit more detail on recent developments and market expansion of ISCC PLUS, focusing on the draft implementing act for single-use plastic bottles, ISCC pilot projects for energy excluded attribution with system users, potential pilot studies for Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs) of mass-balanced products, and the certification of RFNBOs.
Lizzie Young of Kingspan Insulated Panels spoke on the acceptance of mass balance in the construction industry and supported the view previously expressed by Cefic. She added that while it is true, that the mass balance approach has been used in a variety of sectors for many years, it is not well recognized or understood in the building industry yet and education on the accounting method and purpose of the approach is urgently needed to also address concerns about greenwashing.
At the end of the meeting, Francesca Benzi of PepsiCo Europe highlighted the key role that ISCC-certified materials play in achieving the company’s goal of being 100% fossil-free by 2030.
We support the integration of plant-based materials in the composition of our packaging. That is why we invest in certified networks that use renewable materials to replace fossil materials. During the production process, plantbased plastics are mixed with other plastic materials following the mass balance principle. This means that we purchase an amount of ISCC-certified plant-based materials equivalent to 50% of the materials in this packaging. These materials might be used in other packaging units.
We would like to thank our speakers for their valuable contributions, our attendees for their interest and engaging questions, and everyone who made this event a great success. We look forward to seeing you again at one of our next stakeholder meetings!