The recast of the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive, which entered into force on 1 January 2025, aims to tackle water pollution and guarantee cleaner water to European citizens. The new rules agreed introduce an EPR scheme for only two sectors, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, that are called upon to financially contribute at least 80% of the costs of the upgrade of wastewater facilities to quaternary treatment stage.
In a statement published on May 21, 2025, Cosmetics Europe points out that the scheme as defined today leaves no scope for correcting the contribution from cosmetics because the current EPR scheme is not substance, but sector based and identifies only two sectors.

“Our industry fully supports the overall objective of the Directive and the EPR principle proposed. We want to pay our share. We cannot, however, accept such a blatant miscalculation of our contribution to the toxic load,” said John Chave, Director General of Cosmetics Europe. “The documentation provided to us by the European Commission clearly shows that the Impact Assessment based on the JRC list, wrongly allocates to our sector a number of substances that are either not used in cosmetics (e.g. permethrin, an insecticide killing lice and mites), or …