The EU generates massive amounts of waste from manufacturing, food, construction, electronics, textiles… And more is being generated each year.
In addition to losing valuable resources, waste can have significant negative impacts on human health and the environment. For example, incinerating waste can contribute to air pollution, landfills might contaminate water and land.
That is why the EU developed a waste policy that keeps products in use for as long as possible and sets strict standards for how to responsibly dispose of them when they can no longer be used. Policies and initiatives also focus on preventing waste generation in the first place by, for example, reducing food waste and making products easier to repair.
Many reuse and recycling initiatives can contribute to reducing the loss of resources in the EU:
- Reuse centres and second-hand shops make old products available to new users.
- Biowaste is turned into biogas and fertiliser.
- Secondary materials are created from building waste.
- Metals in electronic waste, such as from computers, gadgets and batteries are recovered and can be used in new devices.
Overall, the EU is slowly showing improvement toward recycling more and landfilling less. Still, achieving the EU’s waste objectives requires significant effort. Non-recyclable products need to be phased out, and waste should be collected separately so it can be recycled.
The way we manage our waste also needs to account for new waste streams. For example, as the number of electric vehicles grows in Europe, how will we recycle their batteries? Products need to be designed in a way to allow the recycling and reusing of their components.