Berlin relies on solid plastic lids: environmental protection or inconvenience?

Berlin relies on solid plastic lids: environmental protection or inconvenience?

A tight lid for PET bottles has been mandatory in Berlin since the summer of 2024. This regulation, which was implemented as part of the EU Single-Use Plastics Directive, is intended to make a decisive contribution to reducing plastic waste in the environment. Loose bottle caps have since disappeared from shelves, which is a clear response to findings from the 2015 EU dishwashing seam monitoring. This showed that numerous loose plastic lids could be found on beaches. The implementation in Germany was carried out by the Single-Use Plastic Labeling Ordinance (EWKKennzV), which came into force on July 3, 2024, as rbb24 reports.

The new regulation affects all plastic closures on disposable beverage bottles with a volume of up to three liters. The main motivation behind the so-called tethered caps is to recycle the caps together with the bottles and to avoid environmental impact from discarded caps. This measure is part of the European strategy aimed at improving the recycling of plastics and reducing environmental impact. Aside from reducing waste, companies like Tetra Pak are working to switch to the new standards and have invested 400 million euros in switching to connected caps alone, as euwid reports.

Public Opinions and Impact

Consumer response to the introduction of tight lids has been mixed. A May 2025 study by the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions found that two-thirds of Germans find these solid lids inconvenient, while almost half see no environmental benefit. Despite the criticism, there is also positive feedback: In Schöneberg, retailers report less waste and more bottles being returned with lids. The Berlin initiative “Alles im Fluss”, which organizes clean-up campaigns, has also recorded a decline in the number of lids found.

The Federal Environment Agency also records a positive trend: compared to 2015, a 29 percent decrease in single-use plastic products was found on EU beaches, and on the Baltic Sea the decrease is even 45 percent. This could be at least partly due to the new regulations. However, in order to further improve the situation, the Federal Association of the Food Industry (BVE) expressed concerns: It sees no additional benefit for consumers or the environment from the cap regulation.

European action on plastic waste

The fight against plastic waste has a long tradition in the EU. A comprehensive EU strategy for plastics was presented back in 2018, which aims to make all plastic packaging reusable or recyclable by 2030. Every year, each person in the EU generates an average of 36.1 kg of plastic packaging waste, of which only 14.7 kg per person is recycled. To combat the increase in plastic packaging waste, several measures to reduce packaging waste and microplastic pollution were launched in 2023. These initiatives complement previous decisions such as the ban on single-use plastic in 2019, as Europarl points out.