Brussels, 09/05/2014 (Agence Europe) - The forthcoming revision of the legislation on waste, to be carried out shortly by the European Commission, gives the EU a unique opportunity to make progress towards a circular economy, the main European environmental NGOs stress. They therefore launched a call, on Thursday 8 May, for the EU to make use of the broad range of legal and economic instruments to make its waste policy more effective in the use of resources. In a joint declaration, this collective of NGOs (BEE, Zero Waste Europe, Rreuse, Greenpeace, Ecos, Seas at Risk, the Surfrider Foundation Europe and Friends of the Earth Europe) gives a ten-point list of its recommendations.
“The review of waste policy is an opportunity to set Europe on a path towards resource efficiency. The EU depends on imports for most of its valuable materials, yet many of these end up in landfills and incinerators. This is not just a missed opportunity, it is pure folly”, stresses Piotr Barczak, waste policy expert for the BEE.
The NGOs call on the EU to: - lay down a binding objective for the reduction of materials used, based on a total materials consumption indicator; - lay down a residual zero waste target for 2025; - bring in binding waste prevention objectives, at EU level and nationally, for municipal, commercial and industrial waste (including a food waste prevention target); - prepare re-use targets for solid municipal waste and packaging, with targets, at least for textiles and furniture, based on the weight of the material per head of population placed on the market by these accredited re-use centres; - increase recycling targets to at least 70% for solid municipal waste, lay down a general recycling target of 80% and encourage the recycling of at least 75% of plastic packaging; - lay down a binding target for the reduction of marine waste of 50% and include a clear definition of this type of waste in the legislation on waste, recognising the scale of its impact on the marine environment; - introduce obligatory separate collection of waste by 2020, particularly for bio-waste (organic waste) from homes and the hotel and catering sectors, as well as separate targets for materials such as paper, cardboard, metals and textiles; - promote economic instruments that support the full implementation of the waste hierarchy, such as extended producer responsibility, pay-as-you-throw schemes and the taxation of resources; - design out single-use, non-recyclable products and toxic materials such as micro plastics and oxo-fragmentable plastics; - ban landfill and incineration by 2020 for all recyclable and compostable waste and ban the financing of incinerators and landfills via structural and cohesion funds.
This declaration is specifically published ahead of Let's Clean up Europe day, on 10 May (see EUROPE 11065). The framework directive on waste (Directive 2008/98/EC), the directive on landfill (Directive 1999/31/EC amended by Directive 2011/97/EU) and the directive on packaging and packaging waste (94/62/EC) are soon to be revised. (AN)