Brussels - The European Commission should draft specific EU legislation to introduce compulsory recycling of biowaste, including garden residue and food waste from restaurants and food processing units, the European Parliament has said.

In a resolution regarding the European Commission's 2008 Green Paper, the parliament stated that "the rules on the management of bio-waste are fragmented and the current legislative instruments are not sufficient to achieve the stated objectives of the effective management of bio-waste". And: "Consequently, a specific directive is necessary for the management of bio-waste. So it is necessary to compile all the various rules on the management of bio-waste in a single piece of legislation. This would in itself be an exercise in legislative excellence and better lawmaking, whilst at the same time ensuring simplification, greater clarity and better monitoring and enforcement of implementation and legal certainty and thus guaranteeing the long-term confidence of public and private investors.

Bio-waste accounts for more than 30 percent of solid urban waste and the volume of bio-waste is rising in the European Union, representing a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions and other negative environmental effects when dumped in landfills in conditions owing to which waste management is now the fourth most important source of greenhouse gases.

So the Parliament urges the Commission to review the existing legislation applicable to bio-waste with a view, in accordance with the subsidiarity principle, to drawing up a proposal for a specific directive by the end of 2010, including inter alia:

* establishment of a mandatory separate collection system for the Member States, except where this is not the appropriate option from the environmental and economic point of view,

* recycling of bio-waste,

* a quality-based classification of the different types of compost from bio-waste.

The resolution, which is not legally binding, was drawn up by Portuguese MEP José Manuel Fernandes in the Parliament's environment committee.

More information can be found under europarl.europa.eu.

Quelle: EU Parliament

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