GVM Gesellschaft für Verpackungsmarktforschung, Mainz, has presented its recycling balance for Germany for 2022. According to the report, the recycling rate for packaging in Germany has risen by 0.6 percentage points to 83.9 percentage points. This means that almost 84% of all packaging placed on the market in Germany has been recycled.

According to GVM, packaging consumption fell by two percentage points to 15.4 million tons – this also includes packaging in the commercial and industrial sectors. Packaging for private final consumption also recorded a decline – with the exception of fiber-based composite packaging, which increased by around eight percent. The trend towards replacing plastic packaging with such composites thus appeared to be confirmed.

Looking at the recycling rates of the various materials, they have increased for almost all of them – except for glass and liquid cartons. The recycling rate for the latter fell sharply by over eleven percentage points, the reason given being the failure of a large German recycling plant.

Plastic has the highest increase in the recycling rate – from 63.5% to 65.6%. At the same time, the IK Industrievereinigung Kunststoffverpackungen laments a decline in the consumption of plastic packaging in 2022 compared to the previous year by 87,000 tons or 2.6% to a total of 3.2 million tons. The decline in private end consumption was even greater and is attributed, among other things, to the aforementioned replacement of plastic with other materials, primarily paper composites.

Picture: Sorted plastic packaging from the German lightweight packaging collection (Initiative "Mülltrennung wirkt" / Holger Martens)