FEAD – the European Federation of Waste Management and Environmental Services – has claimed that waste firms are ‘concerned’ by the need to raise awareness of eco-design on waste management and recycling.
This comes the day before the European Commission is due to publish its work plan on the Eco-Design Directive, a piece of legislation that will aim to promote sustainable design of products, including design for recyclability.
Circular Economy
The Directive is aimed to work alongside the Commission’s Circular Economy package, published in December, which includes higher recycling and landfill diversion targets for EU Member States.
Tomorrow (20 April) the Commission will unveil a work plan outlining the scope of the legislation.
Karmenu Vella, Commissioner for the Environment, outlined some of the proposed areas of focus of the Directive in a speech to the EU Parliament’s Environment Committee in Brussels yesterday, noting that the legislation would address “reparability, durability, upgradability, and recyclability” of goods.
He added: “To keep track of its implementation, the package foresees a progress report five years after its adoption. However, more regular updates to Member States, the European Parliament and Stakeholders are under discussion.”
FEAD
Ahead of the publication of the work plan tomorrow, FEAD has set out what it sees as the priority areas for the legislation. The organisation had previously been critical of the lack of ‘pull measures’ to stimulate recycling within the Circular Economy package.
FEAD secretary general, Nadine De Greef, said: “Our members are concerned by the necessity to raise awareness on the impact of eco-design choices on the waste management processes.
“Therefore, it is important to us that durability reparability and recyclability requirements are established in the coming work plan and that relations between the manufacturing and the waste and resource industry are facilitated and intensified.”
Within its wish list FEAD has called for a focus on extended producer responsibility schemes to take into account the recyclability and re-usability of products. The organisation claims that fees paid to producer responsibility schemes by manufacturers should be structured to incentivise manufacturers to design products in a recyclable way.
FEAD has also called for the legislation to facilitate the cooperation between manufacturers and the waste sector in the design of goods.
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