FEAD calls upon the final trilogue negotiations to maintain the level of ambition to make the transition to a circular economy happen
Date
15 Dec 2017
Sections
Sustainable Dev.
In view of the upcoming trilogue meeting on the Circular Economy Package on 17 December, FEAD members call on the EU institutions to maintain the ambitious legally binding targets, which are a central part of the revised Circular Economy Package. The Package will need to include measures to incentivise the whole supply chain, and crucially it will need to strike a balance between the supply and demand for secondary raw materials.
FEAD President, Jean-Marc Boursier: “Market forces alone have not been sufficient to ensure sufficient uptake of certain recycled materials. We need a long term and ambitious policy framework to provide legal certainty, thereby encouraging investments by FEAD companies in more efficient techniques for material and energy recovery, in line with the waste hierarchy”.
The recently announced ban by China on imports as from March 2018 on different waste streams is a wake-up call for the European Union. Not only do we urgently need more treatment capacity, we also need additional local demand through concrete demand-side measures to uptake the recycled materials. If not, efficiently sorted waste runs the risk of being disposed of.
FEAD members are convinced that the right political framework together with economic incentives and an intensified dialogue between all actors of the value chain can lead to a sustainable production and consumption and an increased use of recycled materials.
For further information please contact:
Nadine De Greef – FEAD Secretary General: info@fead.be
Note to the editor:
FEAD is the European Federation representing the European waste management industry. FEAD’s members are national waste management associations covering 19 Member States, Norway and Serbia. They have an approximate 60% share in the household waste market and handle more than 75% of industrial and commercial waste in Europe. Their combined annual turnover is approximately € 75 billion. FEAD represents about 3000 companies with activities in all forms of waste management. These companies employ over 320000 people who operate around 2400 recycling and sorting centres, 1100 composting sites, 260 waste-to-energy plants and 900 controlled landfills. They play an important role in the determination of the best environmental option for waste management problems.