Page 5 from: January / February 2016
V I E W P O I N T
Launched in early December, this long-awaited and
hugely important package has been hailed as a route
plan for extracting maximum value and use from
all raw materials. According to European Commis-
sion vice president Frans Timmermans, it will pro-
vide ‘a clear pathway’ to reaching new targets.
Well, what may be clear to Mr Timmermans isn’t
necessarily so for Europe’s recycling sector.
According to Emmanuel Katrakis, secretary gen-
eral of the European Recycling Industries’ Con-
federation (EuRIC), the Commission has fullled
its promise by delivering the package on time – but
the proposals don’t go far enough.
Katrakis tells Recycling International: ‘ere is
room for greater ambition regarding measures to
pull the demand for secondary raw materials as well
as for correcting regulatory distortions embedded
into EU legislation. e fact today in Europe is that
the cost of EU regulation remains substantially
higher, say, for electric arc furnace steelmakers
using mainly recycled steel scrap than for basic
oxygen furnace plants relying mainly on primary
raw materials. is makes little sense from either
a climate or circular economy perspective.’
Furthermore, Katrakis sounds a critical
note regarding landlling or incineration
of recyclables: ‘EuRIC supported more
ambitious measures, such as a ban on
landfilling of recyclables as well as
phasing out the incineration of
unsorted waste which presumably
would also have been easier to
enforce. e package unfortunate-
ly did not go that far.’
Given that the package comes at
a time when the recycling indus-
try is facing tough market con-
ditions, Katrakis would par-
ticularly like to ask vice
president Timmermans the
following question: ‘Are you
ready throughout the legislative process and
beyond to support and then help implementing
measures which have a concrete impact on the
daily activities of recycling businesses?’
BIR’s trade & environment director Ross Bartley is
concerned above all else that the Commission’s
proposed rules on the calculation of reuse, recycling
and recovery targets will prove ‘complex, costly and
inefficient’, adding that ‘the flawed calculation
method includes the new – and bad – idea of a nal
recycling process’ which, he believes, needs to be
dropped, principally because it will force contradic-
tions with existing legislation in trying to identify
for each material what is the ‘nal recycling process’.
Karl-H. Foerster, executive director of Plastic-
sEurope, says the European plastics industry has
been calling for a legally binding landll restric-
tion on all recyclable as well as other recoverable
post-consumer waste by 2025. Although he
accepts that a 10% target constitutes ‘a step in the
right direction’, it remains a ‘timid’ attempt to put
an end to the landlling of all waste which can be
used as a resource, he laments.
And according to David Palmer-Jones, president
of the European waste management and environ-
mental services federation FEAD, Europe’s econ-
omy can only be truly circular if strong markets
are available for the secondary raw materials pro-
duced by the recycling and reprocessing sectors,
adding that current markets disincentivise sec-
ondary raw material production and uptake.
ese are key points raised by people who know
recycling inside out and whose comments clearly
merit a considered response. To this end, we will
be sending a copy of our feature to the European
Commission and hope to report its reply in our
March issue.
Your package could be more
perfect, Mr Timmermans
Martijn Reintjes
Chief Editor, Recycling International
Does the revised Circular Economy package deliver for recyclers?
Perhaps not enough, representatives of Europe’s recycling industries
have suggested to Recycling International. Their comments, conveyed
in a feature appearing on pages 24-25 of this issue, raise questions
that the European Commission should surely take on board.
3January/February 2016
