Time to stop burying the waste

Two MEPs discuss waste management.

Caroline Jackson

History will show that it was the landfill directive of 1999 that gave the crucial impetus to recycling in the EU. For the first time, it set quantitative targets for diverting municipal waste from landfill. By 2020 even the most laggard country should be sending to landfill only 35% of the waste levels arising in 1995.

No alternative destinations were specified for the waste diverted from landfill. Some countries, such as Denmark, had no problems with the target. Others (Greece, the UK, Ireland, Italy, Spain) sent more than 80% of their waste to landfill and would find diversion to other treatments difficult.

Recycling, after reuse and waste prevention, was top of the pops with environmental groups, above all because it responded to the need to stop unsustainable use of finite resources. It also involves each citizen in collective effort and rewards the inventiveness of those who actively seek to make new products from old.

The principal problems in planting and nurturing the recycling seed have been the initial cost to local councils and the need to introduce local communities gently to the habits of a recycling society. Some countries, such as Germany, started many years ago and have a sophisticated system of separate collection of items sorted by the householder (glass, paper, food waste), plus plenty of recycling bins in public places for people to pop in their rubbish (carefully sorted). Others, like the UK, have moved late to recycling, and are only now moving to deterrent taxes on landfill.

There is some good news: many people want to recycle and welcome the chance. But we still have to solve some problems: plastics reprocessors believe that one effect of REACH will be to make it impossible to sell recycled plastic pellets because of the difficulty of providing safety data on the chemicals in the original plastics; rising freight rates to the far east may make China a less attractive destination for our surplus recycled material; local councils are now finding it increasingly expensive to push recycling percentages beyond the initial enthusiastic phase. Some countries (the Netherlands, Denmark) seem to have reached a sensible balance between energy from waste and recycling with some residual landfill, and their experience confirms that these two forms of treatment can successfully co-exist. Others (Ireland, UK) have been paralysed by indecision and muddle, and now just hope for the best with a late burst on recycling and probably a late switch to energy from incinerating waste.

Will EU law now help to promote recycling? On the industrial side the packaging directive already does, but no directive so far sets any incentives or targets for municipal waste recycling. In 2005 the Commission published a ‘thematic strategy’ on waste prevention and recycling. This wandered round the waste landscape for many pages, but came to no conclusions about EU-wide targets on prevention and recycling.

This has now been rectified in my report on the waste framework directive. The Parliament at first reading inserted recycling targets binding the member states to achieving recycling rates of 50% for municipal waste and 70% for construction and demolition waste by 2020. MEPs believe these targets are achievable. The Council of Ministers dislikes them and knocked them out of its common position. It also erased our, very general, waste prevention target specifying that 2012 levels of municipal waste generation must be no higher than those of 2008. Battle will resume at the second reading in the spring. It is important for the Council to realise that many MEPs will be unwilling to back the idea that energy-efficient incineration can be categorised as ‘recovery’, unless they are given reassurance by the recycling targets in particular that recycling will continue to develop as a companion to energy from waste, and not be squeezed out by it. The Slovenian presidency has some hard negotiating to do on the recycling targets. Good luck to it.

• UK Conservative (EPP-ED) MEP Caroline Jackson is a member of the Parliament’s committee on environment, health and consumer protection and prepared its report on the waste framework directive.

Hans Blokland

Current EU waste policy is based on a concept known as the waste hierarchy. Both the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament have accepted the five step waste hierarchy (prevention, reuse, recycling, recovery, disposal) in first reading. This means that, ideally, waste should be prevented and what cannot be prevented should be reused and recycled as much as possible. The debates in the European Parliament are highly dominated by the choice between landfill and incineration, but the aim should be to go higher in the waste hierarchy: towards recycling. What have we reached and what has to be done in this respect?

At present in the EU municipal waste is disposed of through landfill (49%), incineration (18%), recycling and composting (33%). In the new member states, where major efforts and investments have been made to align with the EU acquis, the situation is evolving rapidly but still dominated by landfill. There are wide discrepancies between member states, ranging from those which recycle least (90% landfill, 10% recycling and energy recovery) to those which are more environmentally friendly (10% landfill, 25% energy recovery and 65% recycling). These figures clearly demonstrate that, also after about 30 years of waste policy in the EU, the potential for waste recycling is still not being fulfilled.

In its first reading on the waste framework directive, the Parliament has set clear targets for recycling, but the Council has not taken this over in its common position. So, in second reading the Parliament should fight for putting these targets back in the waste framework directive. Existing recycling directives have so far targeted individual waste streams and have enabled Community waste policy to reduce environmental impact by promoting source separation and recycling of waste streams such as batteries, packaging, vehicles and waste of electrical and electronic equipment.

While the amount of waste being recycled is increasing, treatment standards exist only for landfills and incinerators and, partially, for recycling. However, recycling can, as other waste treatment operations, generate emissions to air, water and soil. Until now, we have lacked minimum Community standards applying to many recycling facilities, which results in different levels of environmental protection in the member states, eco-dumping and distortions of competition.

The goal of the EU, a recycling society, is a laudable one. Unfortunately we are still a long way from that goal. Although the Sixth Environment Action Programme specified that the Commission must introduce new directives relating to bio-waste, construction and demolition waste, and sewage sludge, it has not yet done so. There is, however, a great need for such legislation, as there is at present a lack of clear rules. That is not helping the environment or the internal market for recycling. Furthermore, the industry itself is asking for European legislation on these waste streams.

Another aspect to mention with regards to recycling is that one of the aims of prevention is the avoidance of hazardous substances in the waste stream. When the waste stream contains less hazardous substances, recycling will be easier and more environment friendly. This means that prevention of hazardous substances in products (and thus waste) is a good measure to encourage recycling of waste.

The discussion on waste treatment should not be limited only to incineration and landfill. Waste treatment has to be improved in the way that more and more waste will go upstream in the waste hierarchy. In other words, the reuse and recycling of waste should be increased and the landfill of waste should be decreased. The first step towards this goal is to ban the landfill of combustible waste. This is also necessary for decreasing the emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly methane, in order to combat climate change. In the longer term such a landfill ban should be broadened to other waste which can be re-used and recycled. This is also a challenge to make the EU a recycling society.

• Dutch MEP Hans Blokland, of the Independence/Democracy group is a vice-chair of the Parliament’s committee on environment, public health and food safety and rapporteur on the strategy on waste prevention and recycling.

Two MEPs discuss waste management.