Eighty-four per cent of people think the European Commission (EC) should increase recycling rates, while over half want to see targets introduced for waste prevention, environmental consultancy Eunomia Research & Consulting (Eunomia) has found.

The findings come in Eunomia’s review of the responses to the EC’s ‘Consultation on the Review of the European Waste Management Targets’ (which opened in June) that seeks to reassess clauses in the Waste Framework Directive, the Landfill Directive and the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive, and bring these in line with the Roadmap on Resource Efficiency and the 7th Environmental Action Programme.

According to Eunomia’s analysis of the responses, 55 per cent of the 256 respondents agreed that there should be targets for waste prevention.

Public authorities were found to be the most supportive of targets for waste prevention, with 84 per cent agreeing with the principle, followed by not-for-profit organisations (78 per cent), European citizens (56 per cent), and industry groups and representatives (43 per cent).

Materials identified as best suited for waste prevention targets included (in order of popularity):

• hazardous waste;
• ‘total waste’;
• food;
• packaging;
• industrial waste;
• biowastes;
• plastics;
• residual waste;
• metals; and
• waste electrical and electronic equipment.

Report findings

In total, stakeholders showed the most support for increasing monitoring and validation of the reports submitted by member states so that the consistency and reliability of data can be validated, and also demonstrated a ‘clear preference’ for establishing a single target and calculation method based only on the quantity of municipal waste collected, rather than collected household waste.

Stakeholders also outlined that targets should encourage/mandate separate collections (of dry recyclables and/or food waste) and that the ‘issues’ of separate collections should be clearly resolved by the European Commission.

Other findings from the consultation responses included:

• 84 per cent of stakeholders thought that recycling rates should be increased and/or made to include more materials/waste streams (with the vast majority of European citizens (98 per cent) agreeing with the principle);
• 46 per cent agreed that separate targets for reuse should be introduced (however, only 28 per cent of industry trade bodies and 25 per cent of industry representatives supported this);
• 60 per cent of respondents thought that targets should be set in relation to the existing situation in each member state (i.e. so that recycling targets do not penalise countries whose economies are growing faster after starting from a lower base);
• 57 per cent of people thought that there should be a limit set for the amount of materials sent for incineration (with 89 per cent supporting limits set on waste collected from households);
• respondents outlined that the maximum levels of waste sent for incineration should range between 19 and 21 per cent;
• stakeholders outlined support for a 60 per cent minimum target per member state for each packaging material by 2020.

UK government position

Despite overall support for new waste targets, in its response, the UK government said it would not support the introduction of new EU waste targets, or extending current targets, as they ‘would be unlikely to improve the current system and could result in perverse or unintended outcomes’.

Writing in its response to the consultation, the UK government said the following changes proposed in the consultation could ‘result in perverse or unintended outcomes’:

• changing the targets or definitions for 2020 set out in the Waste Framework Directive;
• implementing new environmental targets;
• extending landfill bans or restrictions for specific materials at an EU level, ‘unless there is a clear economic and environmental case to do so’.

This project is being delivered by Eunomia – with support from Öko-Institut, the Copenhagen Resource Institute (CRI), ARGUS, and Satsuma Media – under Eunomia’s contract with the European Commission on ‘Technological, Socio-Economic and Cost-Benefit Assessments Related to the Implementation and Further Development of EU Waste Legislation’.

An analysis of the options to be carried forward (as part of the commission’s impact assessment) will be published in the ‘near future’.

Read Eunomia’s ‘Targets Review Project: Consultation on the European Waste Management Targets’.