Higher food prices – due to the costs of packaging

By 2027, all recyclable packaging can be picked up at home. The goal is for more packaging to end up in recycling, rather than the garbage basket. But that means a cost.

It is the producers who pay the bill for collection and recycling of the packaging. As recycling becomes more costly, it means higher price tags for packaging for producers.

In the end, it may be consumers who take the bang, in the form of higher prices in the grocery stores, explains Carl Eckerdal, chief economist at the industry organization Food companies.

– There are no free lunches. If you decide from the Swedish point of view that Sweden will be the best in the European class when it comes to collection, then it will also mean that the taxpayers get a higher price for food in the store, he says.

Already visible Higher costs for packaging.

– If we reverse the band two, three years, the packaging fees accounted for in round slots for one percent of the production cost in the Swedish food industry. Today, that figure has starved to three percent, he says.

How much it will cost in the end, when all municipalities have introduced so -called real estate collection, remains to be seen. Carl Eckerdal points out that when large municipalities like Stockholm start using the new recovery system, it will in all likelihood mean that costs will increase significantly.

Over the latest The months have Food prices have increased sharply. Food companies’ economic letters for the first quarter of this year show that packaging fees were the fastest cost increase for the companies. Over the past year, it has almost doubled.

– Everyone must be aware of what is behind the increased prices. This is an important element, says Carl Eckerdal.

The producer may pay different prices depending on the packaging used. The pricing thus becomes an incentive to choose sustainable materials and to reduce the use of packaging. However, Eckerdal is not sure that these benefits really weigh up for the price increases it can mean at the same time.

– What we ask ourselves a little question is whether we will eventually win at this household collection. If it doesn’t cost more than it tastes.

Minister of Climate and Environment Romina Pourmokhtari (L) believes that real estate -related collection will make it both easier and smoother to recycle. The fact that it is the consumer who ultimately is responsible for the cost is inevitable – regardless of the way the new reform is financed.

« Society carries the cost of all handling of waste. In one way or another, it still ends up with the consumer, either via the tax bill or in the price for waste management, or in the store when buying products with packaging that costs a lot to handle, » she writes in a comment on DN.