[Op-ed] As EU's PPWR takes effect, South Korea moves in the opposite direction on plastics

Han Jeong-hee, Greenpeace campaign specialist

The EU's Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) takes effect across all 27 member states on Wednesday. Under the regulation, member states must cut per-capita packaging waste by 5 percent by 2030 and 15 percent by 2040, compared with 2018 levels. California has similarly locked in a 25 percent reduction in single-use plastics by 2032. The logic is the same: fix a base year, then require an absolute cut from that point.

South Korea is heading in the opposite direction. The government's de-plasticization action plan released in April set a 2030 target of reducing virgin plastic waste by 30 percent against a business-as-usual (BAU) projection. The draft revision of the Fifth National Comprehensive Environmental Plan, which went to a public hearing in July, adopted this as a core indicator. If it clears a Cabinet meeting at year's end, it will become a national benchmark running through 2040.

BAU is a projection of what would happen if no action were taken at all. Left unchecked, plastic waste will only keep growing — meaning the comparison point is itself an inflated figure. Under this accounting, total volume can rise year over year and still count as a "reduction," as long as it rises less than projected. Viewed through that lens, the government's 2030 target would actually allow roughly 15 percent more plastic waste than in 2024. It is a reduction target in name that charts a path of growth in practice.

This was not always the government's approach. The cross-ministry "full life-cycle de-plasticization measures" released in October 2022 set a core goal of cutting plastic waste generation by 20 percent from 2021 levels by 2025. The shift to a BAU-based target represents a clear step backward in just four years.

The problems with BAU-based targets are already well documented. South Korea's greenhouse gas commitment under the 2015 Paris Agreement was framed as "37 percent against the BAU projection" — a formulation that drew international criticism because it could not be compared with other countries' pledges and shifted every time the projection was revised. The government abandoned that approach in 2019, switching to a base-year method and enshrining "40 percent below 2018 levels" in the Carbon Neutrality Basic Act. The waste sector is now reaching for the very yardstick the climate sector discarded.

Within the draft Fifth National Comprehensive Environmental Plan itself, the plastic waste reduction rate is the only indicator still using a BAU baseline. Greenhouse gas and fine-particulate-matter targets are both set against a base year. The Fourth National Sustainable Development Plan (K-SDGs) explicitly states a goal of reducing per-capita plastic consumption from 122 kilograms in 2018 to 110 kilograms by 2030.

The overarching Sustainable Development Basic Act requires all administrative plans to align with the K-SDGs. The Act on Promotion of Transition to a Circular Economy Society likewise defines waste reduction rates against a base year. The plastic target alone stands apart — out of step with both higher-level law and every other indicator in the plan.

The retreat does not stop on paper. When the state pulls back, so does the field. If the circular economy master plan to be established this year adopts this indicator, a decade of policy will run on a target that contradicts its own enabling legislation. Local governments will follow. Seoul pledged to cut daily plastic waste from 2,753 tons in 2021 to 2,478 tons by 2026; Jeju committed to halving its 2020 discharge levels by 2040. Once the national plan reverts to a BAU baseline, local governments lose any justification for holding to stricter standards.

There is still time to act. The draft revision will go through deliberation before being finalized at a Cabinet meeting in December. The ask is not to create new regulations. It is simply to restore the indicator methodology to the "absolute reduction against a base year" approach that the original plan and the law already require. A target is both a policy compass and a promise to the public.

A loose yardstick that strips away the real burden of reduction can generate neither urgency in the field nor momentum for implementation. Just as the EU anchored its commitment to a clear baseline of 2018 and launched the PPWR without wavering, genuine reduction must begin with clear principles — not a convenient fiction.

Han Jeong-hee is a campaign specialist at Greenpeace Korea.

woo@heraldcorp.com