New EU Legislation to Reduce Pollution from Plastic Pellets
New EU legislation to prevent pollution from plastic pellets entered into force on 16 December 2025, with the aim of reducing microplastics emissions at their source.
Plastic pellets are the primary raw material for most plastic products, including synthetic textile filaments, and represent a significant source of microplastics pollution. Once released, pellets remain in the environment resisting bio-degradation and dispersing across soils, rivers, and oceans, posing grave risks to ecosystems and potentially human health.
The new rules will help ensure fair competition across the Single Market, encourage innovation and investments in cleaner practices, and support Europe’s transition to a sustainable economy.
The new legislation applies to all economic operators that handle plastic pellets in the EU. This includes manufacturers, recyclers, converters, stockists and other handlers, as well as EU and non-EU carriers transporting plastic pellets in the Union and operators involved in maritime transport.
The legislation introduces the following key measures:
- Economic operators, EU carriers, and non-EU carriers shall ensure that plastic pellet losses are avoided. Where losses occur, they shall take immediate action to contain and clean up those losses in accordance with environmentally sustainable practices (Article 3(1)).
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- Economic operators must notify the competent authorities of the Member State for each installation they operate, control, or for which they have decisive economic power over its technical functioning. For each installation, they must indicate whether it handles plastic pellets below or above a threshold of 1500 tonnes per year. Before transporting plastic pellets in the EU for the first time, EU carriers or their authorised representatives must notify the competent authorities of the Member State in which they are established, their involvement in the transport of plastic pellets within the Union and the means of transport used (Article 3(2)).
- Economic operators shall take the following actions (Article 5(1)):
(a) establish a risk management plan for each installation
(b) install the equipment and execute the procedures described in the risk management plan
(c) notify the risk management plan to the competent authority of the Member State where the installation is located together with a self-declaration of conformity
- Enterprises operating installations where plastic pellets in quantities below a threshold of 1500 tonnes have been handled in the previous calendar year, shall notify an update of the risk management plan for each installation as well as a renewal of the self-declaration of conformity to the competent authority of the Member State where the installation is located, every 5 years (Article 5(2)).
- Enterprises must implement the actions set out in the risk management plan in the following order of priority: (Article 5(5)).
(a) actions to prevent spills
(b) actions to contain spills to avoid them becoming a loss
(c) actions to clean up after a spill or loss.
- Economic operators, EU carriers and non-EU carriers have the following obligations (Article 5 (6)):
(a) ensure that their staff are trained according to their specific roles and responsibilities and that they are aware of and are able to use the relevant equipment and execute the procedures set out to ensure compliance with this Regulation.
(b) keep records of annually estimated quantities of losses and of the total quantities of plastic pellets handled. As from six months after the publication of the relevant harmonised standard in the Official Journal of the European Union (16 December 2025) , economic operators, EU carriers and non-EU carriers shall estimate the quantities of losses.
- Depending on their size, economic operators shall demonstrate that the handling process at each installation where 1500 tonnes or more of plastic pellets were handled in the previous calendar year complies with the requirements, by obtaining a certificate issued by a certifier (Article 6).
Specifically:
• by 17 December 2027, and every three years thereafter, for large enterprises
• by 17 December 2028, and every four years thereafter, for medium-sized enterprises
• by 17 December 2030, and every five years thereafter, for small enterprises
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- Member States may exempt economic operators from some obligations if the installation operates under a permit meeting specific conditions (Article 7).
- Enterprises registered with the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) may be exempt from certain obligations, provided that the environmental verifier has checked that the new regulation’s requirements have been incorporated and implemented in the enterprise’s environmental management system (Article 8).
The European Commission will develop awareness-raising and training materials to support the Regulation’s implementation and will request European standardisation organisations to prepare harmonised standards for estimating quantities of losses.
The full text of the Regulation can be found in EUR-Lex: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2025/2365/oj
