Goodbye pizza box?

This article is provided to you free of charge. If you want to support our team and promote quality journalism, subscribe now.

Will it be goodbye pizza boxes and the like from 1 January 2025? The waste legislation reformed in 2022 stipulates that from this key date, "containers, trays, plates and cutlery used in the delivery of meals or the provision of takeaway meals are reusable and will be taken back". In other words: Anyone ordering noodles, sushi or Indian for home delivery or picking it up at a restaurant will only receive their lunch or dinner in containers that can be returned, rinsed and refilled. The aim of these and other measures is to produce less packaging waste (see info box).

However, less than nine months before the legal provision comes into force, there are strong doubts as to whether this will happen. "The deadline cannot be met, " says Georges Eischen, for example. And for Claude Ries, "this law cannot be implemented at all".

Georges Eischen is President of the Luxembourg Food and Distribution Association (Flad), which brings together supermarket chains and wholesalers, among others. Flad is affected by this aspect of the waste law insofar as it has restaurant and catering activities within shopping centres. Ries is a management consultant at the hotel, restaurant and catering association Horesca, and answered the Journal 's questions together with General Secretary Steve Martellini.