Lawmakers back EU law to cut food and textile waste

The European Parliament’s environment committee voted on Wednesday (14 February) in favour of EU targets to reduce food waste and an obligation on the textile industry to pay for the trash it generates.

The new rules are part of a targeted revision of the EU’s Waste Framework Directive, tabled in July by the European Commission to reduce food and textile waste, which amounts to a respective 60 million and 12.6 million tonnes of waste each year across the European Union.

The Parliament wants to raise the waste reduction targets proposed by the Commission to at least 20% in food processing and manufacturing, up from 10% previously, and 40% per capita for retail, food service and household waste, instead of 30%.

EU countries will have to meet these targets by 2030.

“This result, however, runs counter to previous commitments made by the European Parliament in its 2020 resolution on the Green Deal to slash food waste by 50% from farm to fork,” commented Zero Waste Europe, an environmental group.

Fighting textile waste

The revised directive also introduces an extended producer responsibility (EPR) scheme for textile products, clothing and shoes.

Under the proposed rules, manufacturers who make textiles available on the EU market will have to cover the costs of their separate collection, sorting and recycling.

“For textiles, we patch up loopholes by also including non-household products, carpets and mattresses, as well as sales via online platforms. We also request a textile waste reduction target, with oversight of exported used textiles,” explained Anna Zalewska, the speaker on the text, who is from the Parliament’s Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group.

By 1 January 2025, EU countries will have to ensure the separate collection of textiles to be re-used or recycled later.

But Zero Waste Europe said the introduction of an EPR scheme for textiles leaves a major loophole – “the lack of targets for waste textile management and prevention”.

Collection of mixed municipal waste

Lawmakers also backed amendments encouraging EU countries to improve separate collection and sorting of mixed municipal waste so that discarded items can be extracted before they are sent for incineration or landfill.

ESWET, the EU association of waste-to-energy technologies, said they were “disappointed” by those amendments introduced by Parliament, saying they are “out of the scope of this revision” and were not accompanied by a prior cost-benefit analysis.

According to ESWET, an additional 60 million tonnes of waste sorting infrastructure capacity will be needed across EU countries to meet these new requirements.

“It is reckless to propose such a scheme without having estimated its financial and environmental costs,” ESWET said.

The European Parliament will vote on the revised directive at its March 2024 plenary session.

The Council of EU member states has yet to adopt its position on the proposal, meaning a final agreement on the directive is unlikely until the second half of this year, after the June EU elections.

Zero Waste Europe has called for further improvements to the text and a complete revision of the directive after 2026 to be flagged as a priority for the next EU legislature.

EU urged to improve sorting of mixed household waste to boost recycling

In a rare show of unity, business and environmental groups have published a joint letter calling on EU policymakers to back mandatory sorting of mixed household waste, saying this is the only way to meet EU recycling goals and prevent the incineration of recyclable paper, metals and plastics.

[Edited by Frédéric Simon /Alice Taylor]

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