Packaging industry questions European waste prevention targets

The EC said it would consider setting waste prevention targets in the future, but Jane Bickerstaffe, director of the Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment (Incpen), said this would be “impractical”.

Members of the European Parliament approved a target for 50% of household waste, such as paper, metal and glass, to be reused and recycled by 2020.

They also said the five-stage waste hierarchy should be a “priority order” rather than a “guiding principle”, giving it more clout.

Bickerstaffe said this was fine for dictating how to manage waste, but should not be used for laying down how to design packaging.

“It doesn’t make sense to design packaging just for what happens to it after use,” she said.

“Packaging design should also include looking at whether it is fit for purpose and can withstand the stresses and strains of the distribution chain.”

The waste hierarchy lays down an order of preference for waste operations: prevention, reuse, recycling, other recovery options and, as a last resort, safe and environmentally sound disposal.

The Local Government Association (LGA) said it supported the recycling targets of 50% for household waste and 70% for construction and demolition waste by 2020, but said the household target could not be achieved “without funding from the retailers and the supply chain to support kerbside collections”.

Friends of the Earth Europe (FOEE) was “deeply disappointed” with the European Parliament vote because it set “inadequate” recycling targets and no target for waste prevention.

Dr Michael Warhurst, head of FOEE’s waste and resources campaign, said the recycling targets were “too low to address the urgency of resource and climate threats”, excluded too many “significant” waste streams, and would be “difficult” to enforce.

He claimed the decision to categorise the incineration of municipal solid waste as a ‘recovery’ rather than a ‘disposal’ operation, provided it meets certain energy efficiency standards, ignored evidence that incineration contributed to climate change.

“EU governments should be planning for future increases in recycling and prevention targets, not wasteful and expensive incineration,” he said.

FOEE was also concerned about the “loose definition of byproducts”, which would allow many materials currently classified as waste to escape from safety controls.

Conservative MEP Caroline Jackson, the rapporteur responsible for leading development of the directive, said the European Council had “played a hard game” and it had been impossible to get it to agree to quantitative waste prevention targets.

However, she said the new directive would oblige member states to establish waste management plans and waste prevention programmes five years after the directive comes into force, which is likely to happen by the end of this year, and the EC must produce waste prevention targets by 2015.

More on the Waste Framework Directive here.

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