The plans cover the full lifecycle of a product from production and consumption to waste management and the market for secondary raw materials. This transition will be supported financially by €650 million from Horizon 2020 and €5.5 billion from structural funds from the EU’s side. The package aims to contribute to tackling climate change and to help environment while boosting job creation and economic growth. The elements of the package are a result of the cooperation led by Commissioners responsible for the Environment and the Internal Market and Industry.
The circular economy has the potential to create new jobs across Europe, while preserving precious and increasingly scarce resources, reducing environmental impacts of resource use and injecting new value into waste products. The key actions highlighted are:
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measures to encourage product durability, reparability, and recyclability,
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reduce of food waste by half compared to current levels by 2030,
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developing a strategy for the role of plastics in the circular economy, which includes a significant reduction of marine litter,
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facilitate the recognition of organic and waste-based fertilisers and support of bio-nutrients,
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development of quality standards for secondary raw materials,
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series of actions on water reuse including the reuse of wastewater.
The key elements of the proposals on waste are as follows:
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a common EU target for recycling 65% of municipal waste by 2030,
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a common EU target for recycling 75% of packaging waste by 2030,
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a binding landfill target to reduce landfill to maximum of 10% of all waste by 2030,
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a ban on landfilling of separately collected waste.
Other elements related to waste management cover discouraging the use of landfills, the harmonisation and simplification of definitions and calculations, the stimulation of industrial symbiosis (in other words, the byproducts of a certain sector are used by another industrial sector as a raw material) and promoting to put greener products on the market.
More information about the package is available at the following links:
