Waste management

The question of what to do with billions of tonnes of waste generated in the European Union can no longer be buried, writes Emily Smith.

The EU produces 1.3 billion tonnes of rubbish each year, in municipal and industrial waste. This breaks down to an impressive 3.5 tonne average for every man, woman and child.

Waste prevention and management has been a political headache for the European Union for years. Since 1975 the EU has had a general framework directive on waste, encouraging member states to reduce the amount of rubbish they produce and dispose of whatever they have with the least environmental impact.

Several waste streams are excluded from the framework, including waste waters, radioactive waste, and much agricultural and animal waste.

A review proposal, published in December 2005, left these streams to be dealt with by their sector-specific laws. But it pulled in sectors including packaging waste, previously covered by their own directives. And it promised a review of recycling targets under the end-of-life vehicles directive, as well as the waste electrical and electronic equipment directive. An extension of industrial installation standards under the integrated pollution prevention and control directive (IPPC) was also pencilled in.

Above all, the review proposal aimed to improve the old directive’s environmental credentials. It gave greater prominence to a five-step waste hierarchy, with waste prevention ranked top and landfill at the bottom, and set quality standards for recycled materials.

Governments and MEPs think the proposal could do more to protect the environment. But their views on how this should be done differ widely, leaving the proposal at risk of ending up in conciliation after its second reading in the European Parliament next spring.

MEPs have upset many people by calling for binding recycling targets. Even Stavros Dimas, the European commissioner for the environment, said that the targets - 50% for municipal waste and 70% for industrial - were "too blunt" to work in every country.

Industry at the same time is stressing the need for a flexible hierarchy, with room to apply different standards to different waste streams.

The European Environment Agency (EEA), which provides advice to the EU institutions and the member states, also warned against too-rigid a waste directive, in a report published last month (22 October).

The report ‘The road from land-filling to recycling: common destination, different routes’, includes national factsheets on the different waste policy options and geographical constraints in the member states.

"Although the overall objectives of our waste legislation are determined at EU-level," says Jane Feehan of the EEA, "the onus is on member states, not the EU, to make the right strategic choices for an effective outcome."

But with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimating that waste levels could rise another 45% by 2020, for hard-line environmentalists, only tough EU-wide waste prevention and recycling laws will do.

The war over waste is now getting serious - and everyone is talking rubbish.

The question of what to do with billions of tonnes of waste generated in the European Union can no longer be buried, writes Emily Smith.