The traditional round wooden boxes used to package Camembert and a number of other French cheeses are threatened by new EU legislation setting recycling targets for the EU, and French officials aren’t happy about it.
The legislation, which would set targets to be achieved by 2030, and would ban any packaging that can’t be recycled, is before the European Parliament and has already been approved by the European Commission.
French members of the Parliament have introduced an amendment to save the cheese boxes. A member sponsoring the legislation that would spare the boxes said that “The wooden boxes used to package cheeses like camembert don’t have a dedicated recycling circuit because it would be too costly to create a logistic chain.”
The amendment would also exempt wax packaging such as that used on Mini Babybel cheeses, also a French product. The amendment calls for the European Commission to come up with a report on how recycling the boxes and wax would actually impact the environment or not.
