The publication of the new national legislation regulating specific waste streams, subject to the principle of Extended Producer Responsibility, determines that future licenses may be valid for up to 10 years, which was a novelty.   

Electrão is awaiting the publication of the new generation of licenses, which will now cover a longer period, so that it can renew and plan activity for the three systems in which it already participates: used packaging, batteries and electrical equipment.   

For Electrão, this new cycle will also be the opportunity to start working on the end-of-life management of single-use plastics for tobacco products, to which it is a candidate in partnership with other companies in the sector. 

This planning exercise, in line with the principles of the Circular Economy, will respond to new national and European legislative requirements and is one of the management entity's main challenges for 2024.  

Portugal currently recycles just over half of its used packaging. Results show that the model of the last 20 years, deeply anchored in the recycling bin, has stagnated. This means that we also need to consider the undifferentiated waste stream.  

For Portugal to meet the targets set for municipal waste management, particularly packaging, it must work on both streams - selective and undifferentiated - and promote multi-material collection and the separation of materials to boost recycling.  

There are many valuable materials in the mixed waste stream and many options for sorting them. For this strategy to succeed, it is essential to leverage the selective collection of bio-waste. By removing organic waste from the mixed waste container all other materials that are still mistakenly deposited in it will be free of contaminants and easier to recover for reuse and recycling.  

The Deposit and Return System for beverage packaging, which the country has been looking forward to for several years, could boost recycling rates to between 80 and 90 percent, particularly for beverage packaging. However, this will always be a complementary effort that will not be enough to reverse the trend.  

The revision of UNILEX and the amendment to the General Waste Management Regime, two major pillars of urban waste management, brought significant changes to the national context with extensive impacts on the three recycling systems in which Electrão participates: packaging, batteries and electrical equipment.    

The changes point to more complex regulations, with more entities taking part in the processes, thus increasing the costs for the recycling systems, with repercussions on consumer bills.   

The European regulatory context in 2023 was no less productive than the national one. The new regulation on batteries has established a new framework. This regulation introduces an important novelty relating to the concept of quantity available for collection and imposes levels of incorporation of recycled materials, as is the case with packaging.  

It is worth highlighting a unique initiative in the recycling sector for the management of end-of-life electrical equipment: the critical raw materials regulation that identifies materials that Europe considers critical. Various geopolitical and geostrategic issues have led Europe to look at its autonomy and consider alternatives for the supply of certain key materials that are not available within the European Union. For the first time, recycling is at the heart of European policies as a way of safeguarding sovereignty and securing the energy and digital transition.