What is the current situation?

The EU has declared the goal of becoming a “recycling society” since 2005. A report on waste prevention and recycling stated that the levels of recycling are rising but at very different rates and from very different baseline levels in each Member State. This is quite clear if we look at the picture statistics from EUROSTAT. Although significant progress has been observed, there is still a lot to be done both to reduce the overall waste generated (which is rising) and the percentage of waste being recycled or re-used.

An Eye to the Future

The Waste Framework Directive has set new targets for waste management and recycling looking at the year 2020. Specifically, by 2020 50% of household waste and 70% of construction and demolition waste must be recycled. Mechanisms are created to enforce that these targets are met. Other targets have been set in different Directives targeting specific types of waste. These are summarized in the following table:

Why is Recycling and Re-Use important?

There are so many reasons that can fill pages! To get started, think of the amount of waste not ending up in a landfill but being recycled or reused, thus saving the earth from potentially dangerous chemicals and contamination of water resources. Conservation of resources which may be limited is also another good reason to recycle, thinking about the sustainability of future generations. Consider the fact that if all newspapers were recycled throughout the year, we would save about 250,000,000 trees per year! And remember, the EU imports many rare raw materials and thus recycling increases also the security of supply. By recycling we save lots of energy as well! As an example, we would need more energy to manufacture one new aluminum can than to recycle 20 cans! Furthermore, the economy is strengthened. In fact, in the EU the recycling sector has a turnover of €24 billion and employs about 500,000 persons. It is estimated that if Member States recycled 70% of their waste, another half million of new jobs would be created.

Recycling and Re-Use

Recycling and re-use are part of the general waste management strategy of the European Union. The three main principles of this strategy are waste prevention, recycling, re-use and improving of final disposal and monitoring. The goal is to reduce as much as possible final disposal of waste and increase prevention. In order to succeed in that we need to influence customers in choosing products with green packaging and improve manufacturing methods.

What is Recycling and Re-Use?

Recycling refers to collecting and processing used materials that would otherwise end up as waste in order to produce new products. On the other hand, re-use simply means using a material or product over and over again. A good way to distinguish is to think of recycling as using the core element of a used product to produce raw material to be used in manufacturing new goods. Waste materials like paper, glass, plastic, metals and other rare metals used mainly in electronic appliances, can be recycled in the form of raw materials and used to produce new products.