Today, the European Parliament voted by a clear majority for the New Circular Economy Action Plan that was adopted by the Commission in March 2020 and forms a major part of the European Green Deal.
With this, the Parliament adopted comprehensive policy recommendations and called for stricter EU regulations for a carbon-neutral, sustainable, toxic-free and fully functioning circular economy by 2050 bringing the New Circular Economy Action Plan closer to its legislative implementation.
These are the key demands:
- Binding targets and indicators: The Parliament calls for science-based binding 2030 targets for materials use and consumption footprint covering the whole lifecycle for all product categories placed on the EU market.
- Besides comparable, harmonized, and uniform circularity indicators regarding material and consumption footprints, this should also include product-specific and/or sector-specific binding targets for recycled content.
- Sustainable products: Rules of the Ecodesign Directive should be revised and expanded to also include non-energy related products. In addition to energy-efficiency, this would include product-specific standards on performance, resource-efficiency, durability, non-toxicity and the ability of goods to be easily repaired, reused, upgraded and recycled.
- Circular economy: Legislation on waste from production and consumption must be implemented more thoroughly, and further measures are needed for key sectors and products, such as textiles, plastics, packaging and electronics in order to move towards a circular economy and to achieve the Green Deal objectives.
Source: EP
More information, BEUC press release and ConPolicy consumer news on the New Circular Economy Action Plan