Environment

The EU Environment Council will start its second reading of the Waste Framework Directive early next year.

In July 2007, the Council decided to "apply flexibly" the five-step waste hierarchy.

At the top of the five-point list was the prevention of waste production, followed by the reuse of products, the recycling of material, and energy recovery, with landfill as the last resort.

The European Organisation for Packaging and the Environment argued that there was no scientific evidence to support a rigid hierarchy and that different circumstances warranted different means of recovery.

Since July 2007, the Council has worked on the text to prepare the "common position", a document that will officially be transferred to the European Parliament in January or February. The second reading will start after this stage.

If the Council and European Parliament agree on the whole directive, the text will be adopted in mid-2008 and transposed into national legislation in 2009.

The Waste Framework Directive is an overarching umbrella law that covers all aspects of waste policy, including legislation on packaging and packaging waste.