Valipac was founded in 1997, on the initiative of the Belgian business community. With 2 goals:
- Help companies comply with legal obligations around packaging materials.
- Help companies optimize recycling and reuse of packaging materials.
What can Valipac do for you? Why should you join Valipac? These and other questions are answered below.
What is Valipac?
Valipac is the recognized Belgian knowledge center for corporate packaging. Their basic mission is to help clients meet mandatory recycling rates for corporate packaging. But their mission is to guide companies in their transition to circular packaging.
What does Valipac do?
The essence is to help you as a company manage packaging waste sustainably, towards a circular economy. The key activities to achieve this are:
- Registration and Reporting: Valipac records how much and what type of packaging waste you produce. And reports this correctly to the government.
- Financial Contributions: Valipac requests a financial contribution from each member company. That money is used to finance collection and recycling systems.
- Support and Advice: Valipac supports and advises you to reduce your packaging waste and manage it more efficiently.
- Promotion of Recycling and Reuse: Valipac promotes recycling and reuse of packaging materials, through various initiatives and campaigns.
- Cooperation with Partners: Valipac cooperates with stakeholders such as recyclers, waste collectors and governments, for effective and sustainable waste management.
The difference between Fost Plus and Valipac
What Valipac is to business, Fost Plus is to the private sector: both companies promote, organize and finance selective collection, sorting and recycling of packaging waste. Fost Plus does this for household packaging, and Valipac for commercial packaging.
Sometimes the dividing line between household and commercial is very thin. That is why the two organizations together drew up the so-called “Grey List”: a document containing the “basic principles for distinguishing between household and commercial products.
Is Valipac mandatory?
No. As a company that works with packaging materials, you are completely free to join Valipac or not.
But you are of course obliged to comply with laws and regulations, especially the extended producer responsibility. You fall under this European legislation when you:
- Packaged goods or have them packaged for the Belgian market (type A)
- Imports packaged goods or has them imported for the Belgian market (type B)
- Imports and unpacks goods within your company (type C)
Under this responsibility, you must collect packaging materials from all your customers and have them recycled through a waste collector. Of this, you must be able to produce recycling receipts.
In practice, this is quite a hassle. When you become a Valipac customer, they take over this responsibility from you (for the most part).
Why should you join Valipac?
The 3 biggest benefits of becoming a customer of Valipac, are:
- You spend much less time on your legal obligations
Meeting your legal obligations regarding company packaging takes a lot of work. But Valipac takes over your take-back and information obligations from you. All you have to do is make an annual declaration of the packaging for which you are responsible. - You get support with recycling and reuse of your packaging materials
It is of great importance that we make the transition to a circular economy. That is why Valipac's mission is to support you in optimizing recycling and reuse of packaging materials. This way you will achieve your ambitions faster. - You receive attractive annual lump-sum payments (premiums)
Every year Valipac pays premiums for roll containers, disposal containers, garbage bags and recycling for paper/cardboard, foil and possibly wood. So you have a direct financial advantage when you collect your packaging waste selectively.
Are there any disadvantages?
You pay an annual fee per type and ton of packaging material. But you will definitely recoup that cost. See their website for current Valipac rates.
Easily do your Valipac returns and declarations with Milgro
Are or will you also be a Milgro customer? Then you will have even less work on your packaging waste streams and obligations. We bring all your material streams together in one clear dashboard. From this you can create a report for the waste register with 1 press of a button. And from that data you can easily export the data you need for your Valipac declarations.
Learn more
Want to know more about Valipac and how you can do your returns and declarations eeasy with the waste reports from our dashboard? Make a no-obligation introductory appointment or book a demo.
