Lawmakers in the European Parliament’s Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) on Wednesday adopted the report on the new EU Circular Economy Action Plan with 66 votes in favor, 6 against, and 7 abstentions.
The key objective of the plan, which is one of the main blocks of the European Green Deal, is to transform the current “take-make-dispose” economy into a circular economy, which would mainly consist of preventing waste and cutting down energy and resource use. Products should be made in a way that reduces waste, pollution, and harmful substances, while still protecting human health.
MEPs called for science-based binding 2030 EU targets for materials use and consumption footprint that would cover the lifecycles of all product categories existing on the EU market.
The parliament’s Environment Committee is also demanding that the Commission proposes product-specific and/or sector-specific binding targets for recycled content. Following this request, MEPs insist that new legislation should be put in place in 2021 to broaden the scope of the Ecodesign Directive to include non-energy-related products. These new directives would be implemented in the hopes of setting new horizontal sustainability principles and product-specific standards.
“The transition to a circular economy is an economic opportunity for Europe that we should embrace,” said the Dutch Rapporteur from Renew Europe group, Jan Huitema. He added that shaping a waste-free society “will create jobs and economic growth and bring us closer to reaching our climate goals: It’s a win-win.”
The vote for the report will be held during the February plenary sitting.