ACT/EU: Push your Ministers to Support a Biowaste Directive

The negotiations about the potential new bio-waste directive are facing serious difficulties and we really risk not having a bio-waste directive at all. As you know most of biowaste in the EU is either landfilled or incinerated and the since the landfill directive is getting bio-waste out of landfills without saying where it should go, the reality is that it will end up in incinerators instead of being composted. Therefore we need to act to put pressure on the environment ministries to ask the European Commission to prepare a bio-waste directive.

The new waste framework directive says in article 22:

“The Commission shall carry out an assessment on the management of bio-waste with a view to submitting a proposal if appropriate.”

The words “if appropriate” mean that the Commission doesn’t have the obligation to write a directive and will only do it if the representatives of the governments in the council ask for it or the assessment they are conducting is overwhelmengly positive.

We need to emphasize the need to have a directive on bio-waste. We need legislation that says where should the bio-waste that is currently being diverted from landfills go! If we manage to push separate collection and composting we will be taking the biggest fraction out of the European incinerators, it is therefore a very important battle.

WHAT TO DO:

Contact the responsibles for bio-waste in your environment ministry and push them to speak out in favour of legislation on bio-waste and to ask the European Commission to start drafting the bio-waste directive regardless of the assessment (which will be heavily lobbied by the incineration industry).

The main argument is: We need that legislation says what to do with biodegradables. Current legislation says they should not go to landfills but doesn’t establish a clear preference between incineration and AD or composting.

For more background info see the paper GAIA prepared for the bio-waste consultation process (Download below).

The European Commission is not very keen on having a bio-waste directive or any regulations on waste therefore we really need to push them via our representatives in the environment ministries.

Having a bio-waste directive is a key issue. It is important we all contact the ministries to push the issue!