Circular Economy? Member States want it ‘despacito’

Circular Economy? Member States want it ‘despacito’

ByThe Circular Economy Team

After an 18-hour-long last negotiating meeting between the Council and the European Parliament an agreement to review the Waste Framework Directive, the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive and the Landfill Directive has been found. Zero Waste Europe welcomes the new agreement which should deliver the promised benefits in jobs, economic savings and reduced environmental impact. However ZWE is concerned that the pace of ambition is too slow to address the challenges that Europe is facing today. The agreement keeps Europe in the right path but it mitigates the ambition brought by the European Parliament in March, and almost every single meaningful objective proposed by the Commission or the Parliament has been axed or delayed by the Council. New EU Waste law aims at recycling 65% of total municipal waste by 2035, later and lower than 70% by 2030 that the Parliament had proposed. The push for repair and reuse through a specific target of preparation for reuse proposed by the Parliament has disappeared along with the marine litter reduction target. ‘National governments have lost the chance of securing a quick and ambitious transition towards a circular economy’, Zero Waste Europe’s Policy Officer on Waste, Ferran Rosa said. Despite the low ambition in terms of objectives, the new directives have the potential to deliver substantial change and contain the relevant elements to move towards a zero waste circular economy, such as the separate collection of bio-waste and textiles that becomes compulsory by 2023 and 2025, respectively, and the call on the Commission to propose targets on waste prevention and food waste reduction. Additionally, the new text aims at mainstreaming economic incentives in an attempt to transform waste management policies and the design of products under producer responsibility schemes. According to Mr Rosa, ‘the text is a long list of good intentions, objectives and obligations, but only implementation will deliver substantial change’.
Read the full article at: zerowasteeurope.eu

Sustainability | Free Full-Text | A Review of Waste Management Decision Support Tools and Their Ability to Assess Circular Biowaste Management Systems

Sustainability | Free Full-Text | A Review of Waste Management Decision Support Tools and Their Ability to Assess Circular Biowaste Management Systems

ByThe Circular Economy Team

Circular economy has gained attention as a key solution for mitigating the increasing generation of solid waste and resource scarcity. As opposed to the linear economy, the concept describes how to develop closed-loop technical and biological cycles by either recycling materials indefinitely with no degradation of their properties (the technical cycle) or returning materials to the natural ecosystem with no harm to the environment (the biological cycle) [1]. Although circular economy practices (such as material recycling) are widely embraced as a sustainability strategy, it is important to consistently assess their net environmental benefits and possible drawbacks [2] and develop methods and indicators that are suitable for assessing circular economy concepts [3]. The term “circular economy” is frequently applied to suggest increased sustainability. However, it tends to focus on an increased quantity of reused and recycled resources and overlook the quality of resource flows re-entering to the product cycle [4]. This can pose a risk of augmenting unwanted recirculation of micro-pollutants [5,6,7,8], if disregarding the material quality, particularly in the transition period from linear to circular systems. In 2015, 241 million tonnes of municipal solid waste were generated in the EU [9]. Of this waste, 40–60% was organic waste [10], representing a great challenge in terms of its management. However, at the same time, organic waste also constitutes a valuable resource as a component in the circular bioeconomy [11,12]. Biowaste-based biorefineries, producing high value products such as enzymes, bioplastic and biofertilizer from the organic fraction of municipal solid waste, is an emerging technology field whose environmental performance should be addressed to ensure a beneficial implementation [12]. This study refers to such circular economy systems related to management of municipal biowaste as circular biowaste management systems (CBWMS). Several decision support tools (DSTs) based on life cycle assessment (LCA) are currently available to assess the sustainability of waste management systems (WMS). These WMS-DSTs are specifically developed to analyse the performance of integrated WMSs from collection, treatment and final disposal. Winkler and Bilitewski [13] and Jain et al. [14] showed large discrepancies in the results obtained when modelling specific scenarios across different WMS-DSTs. Gentil et al. [15] analysed the technical assumptions that caused the difference in the results obtained with various WMS-DST; e.g., time horizon for landfill emissions and calculation of long-term carbon balance when applying biowaste derived compost on soil [15].
Read the full article at: www.mdpi.com