President Guillermo Lasso has announced that this Friday, August 18, 2023, he will send to the Constitutional Court (CC) a draft law on the introduction of a purchase tax on non-returnable plastic bottles.

This announcement was made during the signing of Executive Decree no. 844, promulgating the regulations for the Organic Law on Inclusive Circular Economy approved by the National Assembly a few years ago, now dissolved due to the death of the cross.

This will be the fifth regulation of the law that the Government will refer to the Constitutional Court. The first was the Organic Law on Strengthening the Family Economy and the only one that received a positive opinion from the constitutional supervisory body. The other three proposals were rejected: Reform of the organic law to attract and promote investments for productive development; Regulation Law on financial support in favor of co-activated users of educational loans, scholarships and financial support; and the Law on the Decree on Company Restructuring.

Lasso issued the regulation at the Palacio de Carondelet in an act attended by a delegation of recyclers. There, he recalled a conversation he had while on the presidential campaign, 2020, with the president of the National Recycling Network of Ecuador, Elvio Pizuño. “She dreamed of a law that protects the rights of 20,000 recyclers, so that each of them gets a fair wage for the work they do; that they have recognition for taking care of nature and most importantly: that they have access to social security that guarantees them a pension and a dignified old age,” Lasso wrote on X (Twitter).

According to the president, the signed decree and the legal decree that will be sent to the Constitutional Court “is a real formal framework” for recyclers “who, with great effort, get up at 04:00 in order to start their work tasks.”

According to the president, the regulation was implemented through coordinated efforts between the ministries of environment, water and ecological transition and production, foreign trade, investment and fisheries. We also collected the criteria of the industrial, production sector and civil society because the issue of the environment is a matter that concerns all of us, he said.

The executive commented that “for the first time” with the support of the Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion, they conducted a population census in order to know exactly the number of people who dedicate themselves to recycling, and that this opened the door for the Ecuadorian Institute for Social Security (IESS) to propose a form of membership and thereby increases the chain of benefits.