The European Parliament has voted against changing the legal definition of when dumped paper ceases to be considered waste and fit for recycling over concerns that the proposed new rules could undermine existing environmental laws.<\/p>\n
The European Commission proposal would have moved the point at which used paper is no longer considered waste to an earlier point in the recycling chain.<\/p>\n
Currently, the \u201cend of waste\u201d point is when the raw material enters the paper (re)processing mill.<\/p>\n
MEPs approved on Tuesday (10 December) by 606 votes to 77 and 10 abstentions a recommendation by the Parliament’s environment committee to reject the proposal.<\/p>\n
A European Parliament statement said that MEPs were concerned that the proposal could compromise the health and environmental standards contained in the Waste Framework Directive. This is because the mass containing the used paper, which could contain hazardous materials, would no longer have to comply with those regulations as it would no longer be considered waste.<\/p>\n
The revised law could have led to greater impurities in the used paper mass, which is recycled to make a paper product by the mills, the statement added. \u201cIf enacted, the law could have led to recovered paper being sold while containing 15,000 times more impurities than the relevant paper product standards require,\u201d MEPs said.<\/p>\n
European recycling jobs in the balance<\/strong><\/p>\n There were also concerns that the proposals could damage the European paper recycling sector.<\/p>\n \u201cMEPs consider that the proposed regulation could have a negative effect on the paper recycling rates in the EU, and risks undermining the viability of manufacturing quality paper from recycled materials within the European Union,\u201d the Parliament said.<\/p>\n The Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI) applauded the Parliament’s decision, saying it would save more than 20,000 \u201cgreen jobs\u201d in the paper industry and an estimated 140,000 other jobs indirectly connected to the industry.<\/p>\n \u201cIf this legislation had passed it would have relaxed the EU\u2019s waste management rules and triggered a flight of waste paper out of the EU to Asia, pushing up prices in Europe and undermining the quality of waste paper available for the European recycling sector,\u201d CEPI said in a statement.<\/p>\n “We now hope that the Commission’s environmental protection department will reflect on the content of this resolution and revise the criteria for determining when used paper is waste and when it’s not,” said Jori Ringman-Beck, Recycling and Product Director at CEPI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The European Parliament has vot…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[5528],"supplier":[1630,2317,4514,5585],"class_list":["post-18486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-sustainability","supplier-confederation-of-european-paper-industries-cepi","supplier-european-commission","supplier-european-parliament","supplier-european-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18486"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=18486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}