The Government of Serbia has adopted a new Decree establishing a plan to reduce packaging waste from 2025 to 2029. This regulation sets specific goals aimed at improving the management of municipal packaging waste across the country.
The primary objective of the regulation is to encourage citizens to separate their household packaging waste, which is suitable for recycling, into designated recycling containers. Investments in the collection infrastructure will not be handled by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, European Union funds, or local self-governments. Instead, extended producer responsibility organizations, or operators managing the packaging waste system, will be responsible for funding these investments.
According to the Serbian Government, the role of these operators is to develop and invest in infrastructure that ensures packaging waste from industries, the service sector, and households is collected separately and either recycled or converted into energy.
This initiative is expected to help Serbia meet European Union targets for packaging waste reuse and recycling, as well as overall municipal waste recycling. It will also contribute to reducing the volume of waste that ends up in landfills.
