The European Commission has announced plans for a sweeping shake-up of European law, procurement and standards which could create huge benefits for the UK recycling industry, writes Caelia Quinault.

The Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry Gunter Verheugen has unveiled a Lead Market Initiative which will look at six growing market areas to "unlock market potential for innovative goods and services by lifting obstacles hindering innovation."

Addressing the areas of online health services, sustainable construction, technical textiles, bio-based products, renewable energy and recycling, the project hopes to boost the turnover of these sectors from £89 billion to as much as £220 billion by 2020.

The Enterprise and Industry Directorate lays out 3-5 year plans to develop innovation in each market, aiming to put European industry ahead in the worldwide market.

Mr Verheugen said: "Europe must develop innovation friendly markets are a more targeted way, creating conditions to facilitate the marketing of innovative products and services. The Lead Market Initiative has identified promising emerging markets in which the European Union has the potential to become world leader and where coordinated action is urgently needed."

Recycling

Under the European Commission's plans for the recycling sector, focus will be given to developing technologies and processes for recycling waste streams associated with European Directives such as the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive (WEEE) and the End of Life Vehicle directive (ELV).

In particular, the project will seek to address "uncertainty on the product properties and weak market transparency", looking at problems developing markets for materials where some markets have failed, such as plastics.

Europe-wide standards could also be established to help member states trade with non-EU countries safely outside the framework of European law.

The Commission explained: "The establishment of common EU standards, labels and certificates constitutes a promising way to reduce the presence of those impediments. Appropriate external trade measures related to the standardisation formulation and enforcement are possible ways to adequately address the risk of circumventing the Union's waste management dispositions by exploiting different regulatory frameworks in other regions of the world."

The Lead Market initiative will also support the development of new recycling technology and the role played in this by Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs).

The document said: "There is also potential to significantly improve recycling efficiency and capacity by encouraging innovation and introducing more effective processes and technologies. This would help save costs, energy and natural resources and thus help Europe to be less dependent on prices of raw materials.

"In this respect, the possible contribution of pilot plants to the reduction of innovation barriers and of the risk involved in upscaling new technologies is noteworthy," it added.

Roadmap

At present, Europe's recycling sector has a turnover of £18 billion and employs about 500,000 people. It is made up of around 60,000 companies and has around 50% of the world share of the waste and recycling industries.

In order to engender change, the EC is proposing a roadmap of policies which will foster recycling markets, and increase more and better levels of recycling.

The document said: "The action plan for this lead market areas proposes a package of policies (legislation, standards and labelling, public procurement, financing, knowledge sharing and international action) that acting in synergy can foster recycling markets, increase more and better recycling, yield environmentally and economic gains and in the long run can improve Europe's competitive position."