At an Environment Council meeting on Monday 25 March, EU Member States’ climate and environment ministers discussed the framework directive on the impact of the textile sector and food waste on the environment (see EUROPE 13370/21). While the European Commission’s proposal was unanimously welcomed, a balance still needs to be struck on a number of points.
Food waste. First of all, the Member States revisited the issue of targets at length, while the European Commission’s proposal, presented on 5 July 2023 (see EUROPE 13216/3), is based on binding targets of a 30% reduction in per capita food waste in both the retail trade and consumption (restaurants, catering services and households) by 2030 compared with 2020. The production and processing sectors, for their part, are expected to reduce food waste by 10%.
Some Member States, such as Germany, regretted that the proposed targets “fall short of those of the United Nations”, the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12.3 of which aims to halve the amount of global per capita food waste.
Other countries, such as Italy, however, called for the targets to be “realistic” and felt that 2020 was not a wise choice to use as a benchmark, given that the Covid-19 pandemic had a considerable impact on production, consumption and behaviours.
The issue of edible and non-edible food waste also featured prominently in the discussions. For Sweden and Finland in particular, reduction targets should initially focus on edible waste.
“Industry will be able to reduce non-edible waste through reuse, but households will not be able to”, said Finland’s Minister of the Environment, Kai Mykkänen, while Helsinki is arguing in favour of non-binding targets for households “until such time as it is possible to divide waste into two categories, ‘edible’ and ‘non-edible’”.
Spain, which agrees with Sweden and Finland on the need to distinguish between edible and non-edible waste, also asked for more flexibility for Member States in order to take better account of specific regional characteristics.
In addition, several countries asked for impact studies to be carried out. The Netherlands defended its wish to include the primary sector in the scope of the text, while Romania felt that the impact of tourism should also be taken into account.
Textile waste. During the interventions, Member States’ ministers supported the proposal to extend the requirements to textile producers so that they are obliged, among other things, to cover the costs of managing textile waste.
However, on this point, some Member States, such as Sweden, insisted on the need to strike a balance between “functional extended liability and guarantees for entrepreneurship”. Sweden’s State Secretary for Climate and the Environment, Daniel Westlén, also stressed, according to Stockholm, “the importance of extending the life cycle of textiles”.
“We need to reduce the administrative burden as much as possible”, summed up France’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the EU, Cyril Piquemal. The German Federal Minister for the Environment, Steffi Lemke, agreed.
Paris is also supporting the extension of the requirements for “textile products from third countries that arrive via online markets ” in order to “guarantee the impact of such a measure”.
Spain, for its part, reiterated its insistence that the text should cover “all waste costs, including collection, sorting and recycling”. (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)