The Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety adopted the report by Anna ZALEWSKA (ECR, PL) on the proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Directive 2008/98/EC on waste.
As a reminder, the Commission is proposing to amend the Waste Framework Directive (WFD) focusing on two resource intensive sectors: textiles and food, with the following general objectives: (i) to reduce environmental and climate impacts, increase environment quality and improve public health associated with textiles waste management in line with the waste hierarchy; (ii) to reduce the environmental and climate impacts of food systems associated with food waste generation.
The committee responsible recommended that the European Parliament's position adopted at first reading under the ordinary legislative procedure should amend the proposal as follows:
Preventing food waste
Member States should take appropriate measures to prevent generation of food waste along the entire food supply chain, in primary production, in processing and manufacturing, in retail and other distribution of food, in restaurants and food services as well as in households. Those measures should include, but not be limited to, the following:
- identifying and addressing inefficiencies in the functioning of the food supply chain and support cooperation amongst all actors, while ensuring a fair distribution of costs and benefits of prevention measures, which may include: - the promotion of fruits and vegetables with external defects that are not compliant with EU or UNECE marketing standards, but still suitable and safe for local or direct consumption ("ugly" fruits and vegetables);
- encouraging and promoting innovation and technological solutions which contribute to the prevention of food waste, such as intelligent packaging intended to extend the shelf-life or to maintain or improve the condition of packaged food, especially during transportation and storage, and clearer date labelling on food products and user-friendly tools to reduce confusion and facilitate the use of date markings contributing to the prevention of unnecessary discarding of food items which are still safe for consumption.
Member States should take appropriate measures to ensure that economic operators make available for donation unsold food that is safe for human consumption.
Food waste reduction targets
Members want to increase the binding waste reduction targets proposed by the Commission to at least 20% in food processing and manufacturing (instead of 10%) and to 40% per capita in retail, restaurants, food services and households (instead of 30%), in comparison to the annual average generated between 2020 and 2022. EU countries should ensure that these targets are achieved at national level by 31 December 2030.
By 31 December 2027, the Commission should carry out an evaluation of the possibility to introduce a binding target of at least 30% and at least 50% to be reached by 2035.
Member States are encouraged to coordinate their actions to prevent food waste and share best practices.
Recovery, reuse and recycling
Member States should:
- introduce prior sorting of municipal mixed waste to prevent waste, which can be recovered for preparing for re-use, or recycling, from being sent to waste incineration or disposed in landfills;
- set up separate collection at least for paper, metal, plastic and glass, and, by 1 January 2025, for textiles, and shall be encouraged to set up separate collection for wood;
- undertake necessary measures to ensure sufficient infrastructure is in place for separate collection of waste and is made easily accessible, for all kinds of waste, and where appropriate, increase the number of points of separated waste collection.
Extended producer responsibility for textile products, clothing and footwear
According to the European Environment Agency, currently less than 1% of all clothing waste is used to make new clothing in a circular loop. Total textile waste generated, covering clothing and footwear, home textiles, technical textiles, and post-industrial and pre-consumer waste, is estimated to be 12.6 million tonnes.
The new rules, as adopted by Members, would set up extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes, through which economic operators that make textiles available on the EU market would cover the costs for their separate collection, sorting and recycling. Member States should establish these schemes 18 months after the entry into force of the directive (compared to 30 months proposed by the Commission). In parallel, EU countries would need to ensure, by 1 January 2025, the separate collection of textiles for re-use, preparing for re-use and recycling.
These rules would cover textile products such as clothing and accessories, blankets, bed linen, curtains, hats, footwear, mattresses and carpets, including products that contain textile-related materials such as leather, composition leather, rubber or plastic.
Member States should ensure that all relevant actors are fully involved in the decision-making process of the extended producer responsibility scheme.
Providers of online platforms allowing consumers to conclude distance contracts with traders should ensure that producers of textile, textile-related and footwear products be registered in the register of the producers in the Member State where the consumer is located, before placing products from those producers onto their platforms.