Tag: Waste

The European Court of Auditors has criticised the EU’s waste management infrastructure, which has received €10.8 billion in structural funding since 2000, for its "limited" effectiveness.

The European Parliament's environment committee backed a proposed resource efficiency roadmap for Europe on 25 April, marking an important step in EU policymakers' efforts to decouple natural resource use from economic growth. However, in an effort to find a compromise, they left aside proposed ambitious deadlines and measures.

While the EU seeks to curb its import dependency on raw materials through better re-use and recycling, the bloc remains a top exporter of all sorts of waste – including paper, plastics and metals.

Recycling has become a central part of the EU's climate change strategy by helping the bloc to tackle the nearly three billion tonnes of waste produced by Europe annually, much of which enters the atmosphere in the form of CO2 and methane emissions from landfill sites and incineration plants.

Despite a marked improvement in some countries, new statistics show that waste keeps piling up in most EU member states, suggesting that further effort is required for the bloc to become a "recycling society" that avoids waste and uses it as a resource.

The European Commission should draft specific EU legislation to introduce compulsory recycling of biowaste, including garden residue and food waste from restaurants and food processing units, the European Parliament said yesterday (6 July). 

The volume of municipal waste generated by Europeans varied a lot in 2008 - from 306 kg in the Czech Republic to 802 kg in Denmark - but the overall trend is clearly upwards, reveals a report by the European Environment Agency (EEA).

A specific EU body could be set up to carry out controls and inspections in member states to enforce compliance of national waste laws with EU legislation, argues a European Commission study published yesterday (1 February).

The European Commission does not have enough resources to properly enforce the implementation of the EU's Landfill Directive and related infringement cases against member states have very little effect, regretted an official at the EU executive, suggesting that the establishment of an EU waste implementation agency would remedy the situation.

The European Commission is currently under heavy pressure from Belgium, Spain and industry to propose a stand-alone directive for biowaste management, in order to plug the regulatory holes left by existing EU waste legislation.

Environment ministers from the 27 EU countries yesterday (20 October) approved a new framework waste directive that includes provisions to burn waste for energy use as part of a five-step hierarchy prioritising prevention.

The Parliament and Council are locked in a battle over waste targets, after a trialogue meeting on 2 June in conjunction with the Commission produced no agreement on percentage targets for household and demolition waste.

The European Commission has warned the Italian government not to take "extreme measures" against EU citizens, just 12 days after Silvio Berlusconi was sworn in as prime minister.

Recycling targets should be increased and incinerators subjected to efficiency criteria when burning waste for energy 'recovery' purposes, according to MEPs who voted on a controversial revision of EU recycling rules on 8 April. 

Research shows that establishing EU-wide legally binding recycling targets for municipal solid waste could save up to 144 million tonnes of CO2 per year. 

On 12 July 2007, a revised regulation on the shipment of hazardous and non-hazardous waste entered into force. The Commission hopes that the new rules will prevent illegal dumping of hazardous EU waste in developing countries, following a 2006 incident in which 16 people in Ivory Coast were killed as a result of a toxic-sludge dump by an EU vessel.

London Vice-Mayor Nicky Gavron plans to spearhead decentralised generation so that every household in the city can eventually produce its own energy and cut CO2 emissions. New fines for polluting trucks and coaches are also planned for 2008, she has told EurActiv in an interview.

After difficult negotiations and despite considerable previous disagreement among member states, the Environment Council on 28 June reached an unanimous decision on the revision of the Waste Framework Directive, sparking NGO criticism and industry applause.

The agenda of the 28 June Environment Council includes potentially difficult issues such as mercury storage and the revision of the Waste Framework Directive. Negotiations, to be held in Luxembourg, are expected to last well into the night.

European responses to waste generation have been fragmented (twelve directives since the 1970s) and inefficient until now. The Commission's proposed Thematic Strategy (21 Dec. 2005) sets up a framework for a holistic review of the existing EU waste policy, based on prevention and recycling.

MEPs are voting in plenary tomorrow (13 February 2007) on two reports: the EU Waste Directive aims to set binding targets for waste prevention for the first time, while the 'Thematic Strategy on the Prevention and Recycling of Waste' focuses on the long-term EU waste strategy.

The Environment Council has emphasised the importance of keeping a clear waste hierarchy that puts the priority on prevention, thereby soothing green NGO fears that it wanted to prioritise incineration for generating energy.

The proposed new waste strategy seeks to cut waste generation and boost recycling and recovery through a new 'life-cycle' approach. But it leaves the thorny issue of recycling and prevention targets to EU states.