Internal Commission documents seen by EurActiv revealed the bundle of rules and initiatives will include \u201ctargeted action\u201d in food, construction, industrial and mining waste, and public procurement.<\/p>\n
Policymakers believe that the shift to a circular economy, in which as little is wasted as possible, is necessary in a world with finite resources and a booming population.<\/p>\n
The paper is not yet finalised, leaves out exact numbers for 2025 and 2030 targets, and is subject to change. It will require approval by the College of Commissioners before it is launched before the end of the year, most likely in December.<\/p>\n
Landfill targets are mentioned twice in the document but are bracketed, which could signal doubt over their final inclusion in the package.<\/p>\n
But the document does point to the likely direction of the executive\u2019s thinking on how best to replace the package of waste, incineration, and recycling laws it axed in December last year.<\/p>\n
The previous Barroso Commission had proposed its own circular economy package, which was pending when President Jean-Claude Juncker took over almost a year ago. It was controversially axed by First Vice-President Frans Timmermans as part of the executive\u2019s drive for leaner law-making dubbed “better regulation”.<\/p>\n
>>Read: Waste laws will be binned despite protests<\/p>\n
Timmermans promised the new package would be \u201cmore ambitious\u201d and include the \u201cfull circle\u201d of the circular economy. This was widely interpreted as a signal that the replacement package would have an increased focus on Eco-design standards for making products easier to recycle.<\/p>\n
That is borne out by the internal document, which states that the European Commission will adopt an Eco-design plan for 2015-2017. This will focus on developing product requirements under the Eco-design directive.<\/p>\n
The current Eco-design directive focuses only on energy efficiency. But in the future, the document states, resource efficiency issues such as reparability, durability, and recyclability will be examined.<\/p>\n
To incentivise better product design, the Commission plans to alter the amounts of money producers pay towards the end of life treatment of their products. This will be done through Extended Producer Responsibility schemes that mandate producers to pay for the recycling of their products.<\/p>\n
Revised legislation on waste<\/p>\n
On waste, the draft circular economy package mentions \u201clong-term\u201d recycling targets for paper, glass, plastics, metal and wood packaging, which will reinforce municipal waste targets. A 2025 and 2030 target for recycling wood packaging is mentioned, but without a percentage. Action on landfill is also cited in the draft, but is bracketed.<\/p>\n
The executive will also examine the role of biomass \u2015 burning wood for energy \u2015 and its compatibility with the EU\u2019s Energy Union strategy and the circular economy.<\/p>\n
The draft EU laws on waste will clarify the definition of by-products in a bid to encourage their re-use.<\/p>\n
Turning to agriculture, the Commission draft says it will launch legislation to revise EU regulations on fertilisers. It will also issue binding rules for minimum requirements for reused water. Waste can be reused in irrigation and groundwater recharge.<\/p>\n
Finance<\/p>\n
The action plan sees a major role for research and innovation funding under the EU’s Horizon 2020 prgoramme. This is expected to drive the investment in innovation needed to sterr the transition to a new circular economy.<\/p>\n
There will be a \u201ctargeted outreach\u201d to help the financing of circular economy projects under the \u20ac315-billion Juncker Investment Plan. Cohesion Policy funds are also cited as possible sources of finance for green projects, according to the paper.<\/p>\n
The executive will push to integrate circular economy issues into Green Public Procurement criteria, and reinforce its use in EU funding, the paper says.<\/p>\n
Stopping short of regulation<\/p>\n
EU officials have stopped short of issuing draft legislation for plastics, food waste, critical raw materials, construction and demolition, and biomass, according to the action plan.<\/p>\n
Instead, it will adopt a strategy on plastics, focusing on recyclability, the prevention of marine litter, biodegradability and hazardous substances.<\/p>\n
On food waste, the European Commission is proposing a common EU method for measuring discards at different stages of the supply chain. It plans to clarify existing legislation to minimise it, and will look into how to make \u201cbest before\u201d labels more widely understood.<\/p>\n
The executive plans a report on critical raw materials, which will feed into likely later action. Pre-demolition guidelines to encourage recovery of construction and waste will also be developed by officials.<\/p>\n
It is possible all of these softer intiatives could be replaced with hard regulation in the future.<\/p>\n
The Commission plans to work with the European Environment Agency to monitor the bloc\u2019s progress towards the circular economy, according to the draft document.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
EXCLUSIVE \/ The European Commission’s new circular economy package will include fresh legislation on…<\/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":[10416],"supplier":[2317,2865],"class_list":["post-29931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-circulareconomy","supplier-european-commission","supplier-european-environment-agency-eea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29931","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=29931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29931"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=29931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}