described the recent vote by the European Parliament as a big step forward for sustainable waste policies in Europe.
Friends of the Earth Europe (FoE-Europe), European Environmental Bureau (EEB), Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), and Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) welcomed February’s vote prioritizing waste prevention, reuse, and recycling as key elements for dealing with waste in Europe, and setting binding targets for waste reduction.
Parliament voted for each Member State to recycle 50 percent of municipal waste and 70 percent of industrial, manufacturing, construction and demolition waste by 2020. It also voted for governments to set up separate collection of key recyclable materials, and for the European Commission to propose a Directive on Biowaste by June 2008. In addition, Parliament voted that EU countries should stabilize their waste production by 2012, challenging the outdated idea that we must always produce more and more waste, said the group.
Waste is a growing problem for the EU, which produces more than 500kg of waste per person per year, a figure that reportedly outstrips GDP growth. Official statistics show that of the 3.5 billion tonnes of waste produced by the EU each year, less than a third of the municipal waste is recycled and almost half goes to landfill sites.
