EU circular waste action remains “powerless” claims European Court of Auditors

06 Jul 2023 --- The EU has made little progress in its transition to a circular economy, finds the European Court of Auditors (ECA) in its latest report. The auditors stress that the EU’s ambition of doubling its share of material recycled and fed back into the economy by 2030 looks “very challenging.”

Between 2015-2021, the average circularity rate for the 27 EU countries increased by 0.4%. Seven member states, including Lithuania, Sweden, Romania, Denmark, Luxembourg, Finland and Poland, regressed during that time.

“Preserving materials and minimizing waste is essential if the EU wants to become resource efficient and achieve the environmental objectives of its Green Deal,” says ECA member Annemie Turtelboom. “But EU action has been so far powerless, meaning the circular transition is unfortunately almost at a standstill in European countries.”

The EU’s external auditor defines a circular economy as preserving the value of products, materials and resources for as long as possible to minimize waste.

Preserving materials and minimizing waste is essential for the EU to become resource efficient, says Turtelboom. Mismanaged funds?
To help in the circular transition, the European Commission (EC) issued two Circular Economy Action Plans. The first, from 2015, contained 54 specific actions. The second, published in 2020, added 35 new actions and set the target of doubling its “circularity rate” – the proportion of recycled material and fed back into the EU economy – by 2030.

While neither of the plans are binding, they were designed to support member states in increasing circular-economy activities. By June 2022, nearly all EU countries had a national circular-economy strategy or were in the process of developing one, asserts the ECA.

The EU made a significant amount of funding available, earmarking more than €10 billion (US$10.8 billion) between 2016-2020 to invest in green innovation and help businesses get ahead of the curve in the transition to a circular economy.

But the ECA says that member states spent most of the money on waste management rather than prevention through circular design, which the organization believes would have led to a more circular outcome.

The EU action plans also included various measures to enable innovation and investment. But the auditors found limited evidence that these measures contributed effectively to a circular economy. They had only modest impact at best in helping businesses to produce safer products, or to access innovative technologies to make their production processes more sustainable.

The reuse debateMember states spend most on waste management rather than prevention, flags the ECA.
Rabobank recently found that one of Europe’s largest barriers to recycling is collection infrastructure, more specifically separate collection infrastructure.

“The highest recycling rates are achieved when waste is collected in separate streams, as it makes separation easier and the material that arrives is cleaner. Therefore, having more separate collection options available that are easily accessible and understandable for consumers is a way to increase the amount of plastic that can be recycled,” said Regina Mestre, report author and plastic packaging analyst for Rabobank in Europe.

The ECA auditors also highlight the issue of planned obsolescence – artificially limiting a product’s useful life so that it needs to be replaced. “The EC concluded that detecting planned obsolescence was not feasible, even though eliminating it is clearly key for more sustainable products,” they stress.

But DS Smith found that proposals to increase mandatory packaging reuse in the EU could result in a massive rise in plastic use and backtrack years of progress, according to a report released by the paper packaging giant.

According to a peer-reviewed analysis commissioned by Fefco, the European corrugated packaging association in Brussels, Belgium, mandatory reuse targets applied to all materials would increase the amount of plastic packaging in circulation and establish a “plastic monopoly” on some market segments.

By Natalie Schwertheim

To contact our editorial team please email us at editorial@cnsmedia.com