EU Parliament vote on circular economy missed opportunity to support re-use and to create jobs

9th July 2015 | News

Reacting to today’s vote in the European Parliament on a report on Resource efficiency: moving towards a circular economy, Michal Len, Director of RREUSE, a network of re-use organisations in Europe said:

“Setting separate targets for re-use of goods in addition to those for recycling is crucial to cutting resource use, creating green jobs and giving access to basic material needs especially for low income groups. The report approved today by the European Parliament is a missed opportunity. France, Belgium (Flanders) and Spain already have re-use targets and the EU should be taking the lead on pushing for their wider use. Despite support from the Parliament’s industry committee, it was short-sighted of the environment committee to leave out this crucial component of an effective circular economy package”.

“On a positive note, the EP report does call for moves to tackle planned obsolescence and to require products to be more durable and repairable: that is welcome. Poor product design, expensive or unavailable spare parts and restricted information about repair are severely hampering the independent repair sector and has led to shorter product lifetimes and a dramatic increase in resource use to produce goods that are increasingly being treated as disposable”.

“It’s now up to the Commission to push for a stronger circular economy package with a real push for re-use, including separate targets when it publishes its revised proposals at the end of this year.”