In the latest round of political green-talk the European Parliament's Environmental Committee has recommended that its member states should double their recycling rates by 2020. Each household, they suggest, should reuse or recycle half of their waste, whilst industries and businesses would be expected to cut their non-recyclable waste to 30%. Whether or not these targets are feasible will be decided by EU Parliament in ten days time (June 16th).
Local councils, retailers and consumers have been aware of the need for increasing the amount of rubbish that they recycle for years. The Environment Committee's support for reforms made earlier this year, reforms which recommended that by 2012 waste production levels would merely have to stabilize at 2009 levels, hardly appears as the type of nettle grasping that environmental groups might wish from their esteemed political representatives.
The vote next week rests upon more ambitious targets, but has already been dismissed by the Council of the European Union, which recommended a more lenient figures of reduction. One major problem is that in trying to impose a blanket figure across all member states the reforms will cause some countries to work much harder than others to pull up the percentage of waste being recycled. New countries, such as Poland, lack the infrastructure that older member states have had in place for some time. In addition, some countries, such as Denmark, are leading the way in reducing the amount of waste they confine to landfills (Denmark sends only 10% of its rubbish to landfill sites) whilst others lag far behind, and would need to make a serious financial commitment to meet the new targets.
At present, the Environment Committee reckons that 49% of all EU waste ends up in landfills, whilst 27% is recycled. Despite the ad campaigns and apparent increased resolve from our politicians and captains of industry the amount of waste is expected to grow across Europe by a quarter in the next twelve years. The stakes are high in trying to get these targets through. The University of Dortmund has conducted a study which estimates that around 303 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions would not be released if the targets were implemented. The EU has the power to make unfaithful governments and capricious businesses actually meet the challenge of reducing the amount of junk that they send to land fills. Fines, law suits, prison sentences; surely these are commendable returns for those that use green issues to court public favor but are unwilling to actually make any financial commitment to those ends. Bring it on Brussels.
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This post was written by Matthew Gammie on June 6, 2008