Talks between leading waste campaigners and trade associations have come to light over the possibility of reviving a pan-European recycling platform to represent interests of the sector in EU debates, letsrecycle.com can reveal.
The European Recycling Coalition was established to help ease the introduction of the Waste Framework Directive in 2008. However, its function has been minimal in recent years.
In total 20 delegates attended the roundtable event, with 18 said to represent “recycling business interests” and the others said to be the EEB itself and environmental campaign organisation Friends of the Earth.
The Bureau of International Recyclers confirmed its attendance at the meeting but FEAD – the European Federation representing waste management – was not present at the talks.
FoE
Michael Warhurst, waste campaigner at Friends of the Earth, told letsrecycle.com that the discussions were centred on developing the focus of the group.
“This was a very initial stage in the meeting with discussions about the idea of trying to make sure that the recycling industry has a stronger, more coordinated voice in European debate,” he said.
“This was an initial meeting and it could go in a variety of directions with people looking to come together to talk and develop a particular line of thinking or something other than that.”
Stéphane Arditi, product and waste policy officer at the EEB, said: “The main aim was to have a first, preliminary meeting with different representatives from different recycling industries and trade organisations and discuss if, across different specifications of the waste areas, there was some common understanding.
Mr Arditi added that “nothing concrete” was decided at the meeting but it will form a basis for future discussions. He said: “We did a few exercises to try to identify particularly threads we could work on and we have definitely not got to the end of that process.”
The date of the next meeting has not been set.
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