Less waste, more recycling, products that incorporate circularity from their design stage and sustainable use of the planet’s limited resources: this is the ambition of the Second Action Plan for the Circular Economy, on which the Commission services are working and which is due to be presented on 4 March.
The project under development pursues the strategic objective of sustainable production and consumption. Planned in the framework of the ‘European Green Deal’, this action plan on a circular economy 2.0 “for a cleaner and more competitive Europe” will be “decisive” in making Europe the first climate-neutral continent, the Commission stresses in a draft text that has been leaked.
“To absolutely decouple growth from resource use, we must change the way we produce, market, consume and trade and the way we deal with waste”, it says.
The draft action plan includes the revision this year of EU waste legislation to halve municipal waste by 2030, but also improving the implementation of existing EU legislation. A target for reducing resource use is also envisaged, but still subject to interservice discussions.
Initiatives are also planned for this year to stimulate promising markets for circular and climate-neutral products in energy-intensive industrial sectors such as plastics, textiles, construction and building or consumer electronics.
Last October, the Environment Council stressed the need for further efforts to exploit the potential of the circular economy to combat biodiversity loss and climate change and accelerate the EU’s transition to a truly circular economy (see EUROPE 12342/3). (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)