Making Europe a recycling society

Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas hopes to turn Europe into a recycling society. Europeans cannot go on producing 1.3 billion tonnes of waste every year, he says.

In December 2005 Dimas proposed an overhaul of the 31-year-old EU waste legislation, together with a general strategy on the prevention and recycling of waste.

The waste strategy and revised directive come up for a vote in the European Parliament’s environment committee late next month.

The controversy that followed publication of the Commission’s proposals showed how an apparently straightforward matter of sorting household litter has become one of the most complicated problems in Europe.

The first difficulty is that the Commission has no level ground on which to construct its recycling society.

Recycling rates differ widely across the 25 member states, ranging from 46% in the Netherlands to less than 1% in Slovenia.

Commitment from central governments to recycling also varies from one country to the next. Belgium is generally congratulated on setting up a collection system that sees more than 80% of citizens sorting their rubbish, but the UK is criticised for leaving too much up to its local authorities.

There is still no definitive answer on when recycling becomes worthwhile financially. With 25 different recycling systems in place across Europe and countless different waste streams, from cardboard to cars, putting a figure on the total cost and benefits has proved impossible.

Recycled aluminium can be worth millions of euros, but the money and energy needed to recycle the thin plastic used to make yoghurt pots and salad containers is generally thought to make the idea worthless.

Interest groups have lobbied the European Commission on dozens of individual recycling questions (see right). Fearing that a clear message would be drowned out in the din, the ‘Recycling Coalition’ has brought together an array of lobbyists, from the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) to the European Compost Network (ECN). The coalition wants clear definitions and standard mandatory EU recycling targets.

But even the environmental value of recycling remains controversial. Friends of the Earth (FoE), the conservation group, surprised many Europeans in the 1990s by leading a campaign against recycling glass, arguing that re-using bottles was cheaper and more energy efficient.

The umbrella organisation Pro Europe lobbies for packaging and packaging waste recovery schemes that use the green dot trademark.

Pro Europe is holding a congress in Paris next week (19-20 October), which includes ‘a youth eco-parliament’. The intention is that young people should debate ways of achieving "environmental citizenship". Devising a waste strategy is not in itself sufficient: the EU is trying to change the daily habits of its citizens.

Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas hopes to turn Europe into a recycling society. Europeans cannot go on producing 1.3 billion tonnes of waste every year, he says.