Are the new European waste targets and measurement methodology realistic?

Besides raising the recycling rate, the European Commission wants to establish a new calculation methodology. The Commission wants to shift the point of measurement further down the waste recycling chain. At the moment, many member states base their calculations on the amount of separately collected waste; what happens to the waste after that is not reflected in the statistics. All the raw materials lost during sorting, cleaning and recycling are not included in the calculation of the recycling percentage. 'The European Parliament wants to move the point of measurement even further down the recycling chain than the European Commission,' says Robert Corijn, the commercial and marketing manager of Attero waste management company. 'This would have major consequences, because it makes it more difficult to trace the waste streams back to their sources.' Nana Winkler, a consultant for the Dansk Affaldsforening, the Danish waste association in Frederiksberg, points to the combined result of the two changes: 'Moving the point of measurement from collected waste to final recycled waste makes the recycling targets much more ambitious. It is a risky business to change the calculation method and target at the same time, as we do not know the consequences of the new proposal.'

Robert Corijn (Attero):

"At a later stage it is no longer possible to determine how much of the granulate is made from municipal waste."

Practical problems 

Is a later point of measurement a feasible option? Corijn foresees a large number of practical problems. 'Let's say you have collected and sorted plastic waste and delivered this waste to a recycling facility. According to the European Parliament's new plans, the recycler would have to weigh the amount of plastic waste arriving at its facility. But the recycling company then processes this plastic waste, which involves the loss of some of the material. So, if you want a figure that truly reflects the actual amount of recycled plastic, you'll have to shift the point of measurement even further down the recycling chain. However, it is questionable whether recycling companies will be willing to give inspectors a free rein to check all the details of their processes. After all, they will have company secrets to protect, such as the technologies they use to produce the plastic granules. It is also questionable whether the competent authorities have the capacity to carry out these inspections.'

Complicating factor

Another proposal by the European Parliament is to raise the target for recycling municipal waste to 70% by 2030. This recently adopted position goes further than the European Commission's proposal of a 65% recycling rate in 2030. 'I think the target is too high,' says Winkler. The current municipal waste recycling rate for Denmark based on collected amounts is 46%. The association does not yet know what the new calculation methodology will mean for the recycling figures, because the necessary data are not available. 'We do not really want to discuss the target before it is clear what types of waste are involved and how the target should be calculated. At the moment, we do not have enough data on the amount of waste entering the final recycling process. For one thing, we do not know how much waste is lost during the stages leading up to the final treatment. It is a sort of black box.' According to Winkler, this also applies to other EU member states with insufficient data on these processes. Most countries measure the amount of waste collected. She claims that the amount of municipal waste that eventually enters the recycling process is not accurately measured by any country, and that figures are often based on assumptions. In the Netherlands, too, almost all separately collected waste streams are reported as recycling. On this basis, the municipal waste recycling rate in the Netherlands is 51%.

 

Nana Winkler (Dansk Affaldsforening):

"I think the target for recycling 70% of municipal waste by 2030 is too high."

This lack of data is one of the criticisms levelled by Carsten Spohn, director of ITAD, the German association of waste-to-energy plants. He says the quality of the waste is obviously an important aspect. 'To be honest, just trying to raise the municipal waste recycling rate is the wrong way to go,' says Spohn. 'It is dangerous to talk about recycling targets without tying them to the issue of quality. We know that not all waste materials can be recycled into high quality products, and everyone wants to prevent non-recyclable materials putting the quality of recycled materials at risk.' According to Spohn, at the moment a large amount of waste cannot be recycled, for example because it contains contaminated materials. As long as there are no clear and common quality standards, there is no point in setting recycling targets. High quality standards will also create more demand by industry to substitute virgin materials, he says.

 

Carsten Spohn (ITAD):

"It is dangerous to talk about recycling targets without tying them to the issue of quality."

Spohn has doubts about the current recycling percentages reported by member states, which he says are probably largely inaccurate. 'For relatively simple materials like glass and paper you can achieve recycling rates of 80% to 90%, but it is well known that for materials such as plastics you cannot get much better than about 40%,' he explains. According to official statistics, in 2013 Germany recycled 64% of its municipal waste. But the European Parliament's proposed calculation method gives a recycling rate of less than 50%. 'Achieving a general recycling rate of 70% would be a considerable challenge, even if it does only apply from 2030. We are concerned about this. Such an ambitious target could encourage the use of inefficient processing systems rather than acting as an incentive to work on ecodesign and stimulate the recycling market.'