The Environment Committee (ENVI) of the European Parliament (EP), in a lengthy report outlining its goals for the proposed amendment to EU’s “Waste Framework Directive”, has called for an increased amount of household waste (food as well as packaging) to be recycled or composted. The committee targets recycling rates of 70% for all municipal waste by 2030, with similar targets for marine litter. For packaging material made of paper, cardboard, plastics, glass, metal and wood, the MEPs are pushing for an 80% recycling target by 2030, with interim 2025 targets for each material. The proposals are due to be voted on at the EP’s plenary session on 13-16 March 2017 in Strasbourg / France.

ENVI rapporteur Simone Bonafé said the committee’s goal is a return to the original targets of the Circular Economy drafted by the European Commission in 2014 but revised a year later in what was seen as an attempt to placate member states who saw themselves as unable to comply – see Plasteurope.com of 19.12.2014. “We decided to restore the ambitious recycling and landfill targets in line with what the Commission had originally proposed in 2015,” said Bonafé. “There will no longer be the possibility for member states with the lowest recycling rates to have a blanket derogation.”

Under ENVI’s latest proposals, member states must limit to 10% the share of municipal waste to be landfilled by 2030. Following amendment of the directive, the MEPs would like to see this tightened to 5% but with an exception for countries that landfilled more than 65% of their waste in 2013. The original plan, from 2014, called for the EU to recycle 70% of municipal waste and 80% of packaging waste by 2030, while banning landfilling of recyclable waste by 2025. The Commission’s revised targets, from 2015, called for 75% for packaging waste and 65% for municipal waste to be recycled from 2030, along with a 10% limit for landfilling.

Commenting on the ENVI report, the European Organisation for Packaging and the Environment (Europen, Brussels / Belgium; www.europen-packaging.eu) said it is encouraged to see recognition of the importance of a life-cycle approach in legislation and welcomes ENVI’s proposed improvements to the legal framework for extended producer responsibility (EPR). However, in regard to the packaging reuse, it said it has reservations about how these targets may impact the single market.

The association European Bioplastics (Berlin / Germany; www.european-bioplastics.org) said that in encouraging the use of bio-based resources for packaging the EU will create “an important milestone” towards a circular economy. Also, it said, the amended collection targets would ensure a separate collection of bio-waste across Europe, facilitated by certified collection tools such as compostable bio-waste bags.

Advocacy group European Environmental Board (EEB) said it believes that more than 800,000 new jobs could be created across the EU if these proposals are adopted – enough to employ one in six of the currently unemployed young people in the current 28 member states. “Creating new jobs and slashing marine litter are just two of the benefits that boosting recycling targets and helping the repair and reuse industries could bring," said EBB’s waste policy officer Piotr Barczak.

As the discussion about the EU’s first Circular Economy draft raged, a new study by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP, Banbury / UK; www.wrap.org.uk) estimated that, “if development proceeds along its current path,” the plan would create 1.2m jobs by 2030 and reduce unemployment by about 250,000 – see Plasteurope.com of 18.09.2015.