The EU taxonomy has led to the exclusion of energy recovery from waste. It seems necessary to discuss this again with the EU >>>

ESWET welcomes the European Commission’s 2023 Work Programme and the renewal of the Green Deal’s ambitions.

After months, the bill was passed on August 8th by the US Congress, after various compromises from the original version.

The European Commission has adopted changes to the Waste Framework Directive (WFD). This affects the existing reporting system in Germany and the methodology for determining the recycling rate for municipal waste.

Taxonomy - what is it? The EU Taxonomy Regulation (EU) 2020/852 of June 18, 2020, defines the conditions under which an economic activity is considered environmentally sustainable.

The taxonomy is the first EU-wide classification system for environmentally sustainable economic activities

A bill signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis will establish a unique program to subsidize power purchase agreements and expansion expenses for municipally-owned combustion facilities.

The EU taxonomy has led to the exclusion of energy recovery from waste and all related activities. It seems necessary to discuss this again with the EU.

On the past 4th of February, the Centre for Management Technology offered the “Countdown to UK Plastic Packaging Tax” event. Experts and policy leaders had the opportunity to present their views and knowledge about the upcoming tax for plastic packaging in the UK.

The German government has responded to the developing countries’ call and is topping up its multilateral commitment to adaptation finance with an additional 150 million euros.

To safeguard sustainable treatment of waste in Europe, the proposed new waste shipment Regulation needs clear rules for intra-EU shipments.

Decisions to speed up climate action and strengthen global solidarity

Canada’s environment minister says he’s “cautiously optimistic” that he, and his German counterpart, will be able to convince enough countries to help fund a $100-billion climate change pledge ahead of the rapidly approaching U.N. climate talks in Scotland next month.

With the new report on methane emissions, the European Parliament supports bold actions to minimise the damages methane causes to the environment. The waste sector cannot be left out of the process.

In the ligth of the new economic paradigm, in 2020 the ministry of ecology, geology and natural resources of the republic of kazakhstan raised the problem of solid domestic waste recycling. According to the concept for transition of the Republic of Kazakhstan to a "green economy", in Kazakhstan this indicator should b e brought to 40% by 2030. According to the ministry, only 14% is ecycled today. The industry is not attractive for Investors due to low tariffs: Today, tariffs for garbage collectin in Kazakhstan are low and do not take into account hte costs of solid domestic waste recycling.

Serbia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia are stepping up their efforts to reduce their dependence on landfilling, modernize their waste management infrastructure and align their legal framework with that of the EU. There is widespread recognition that landfilling squanders recyclable materials and is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. These developments are creating business opportunities for waste management companies, equipment suppliers, and engineering firms. The international law and tax firm CMS and the Berlin-based advisory firm Andreas von Schoenberg Consulting have published factsheets about waste management in the three Western Balkan countries, presenting concise background information on the business opportunities.

The Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD) is to fund a 4 MW waste to energy project in the Maldives. The project has received a certification from Global Innovation Institute.

The first conference Sensor-Based Sorting & Control took place in 2004. Since then it was organized every two years and stands out because of its internationality. In 2018, 150 people from 24 different countries participated. The ninth expert conference Sensor-Based Sorting & Control takes place from April 13 to 14, 2022 in Aachen.

State of Vanuatu, a small archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, with a population of 300,000 spread across 65 islands, is one of the first in the world to put into effect the single-use plastic ban since January 2018. This includes non-biodegradable plastic such as bags and polystyrene containers. Furthermore, they also proposed a ban on disposable nappies. In 2019, the state of Vanuatu went further with banning other single-use plastic items such as plates, cups, stirrers, food containers and egg cartons.

As of January 01, 2021, stricter regulations apply to plastic waste exports from the EU. Unsorted or contaminated plastic mixtures may no longer be traded inter-nationally. The reason for this is that this waste is difficult to recycle and thus often ends up illegally in the environment. Therefore, only clean and well-sorted plastic waste may be traded.

On 18 March, a meeting of the EU environment ministers took place. Among other things, the EU Battery Regulation was discussed. Accordingly, the new EU Battery Regulation - as part of the European Green Deal - is supposed to include the environmental and social impacts of batteries throughout the entire product life cycle.

In the course of implementing the circular economy package of the European Union, the Waste Framework Directive was amended recently. Textiles are no longer the poor relation of waste management but have come to the fore.

Hungarian municipal solid wastes (MSW) management has developed tremendously over the past 15 years. More than 3,000 landfills and dumps had been closed, just to mention one improvement. However, still, lots of work is necessary to accomplish the EU’s ambitious aim of decreasing landfilling and increasing recycling and composting.

Today, the blending of materials within textiles is an asset in the design of protective clothing and various technical applications, but material mixes and blends also found their way into retail trade. The rise in end-of-life items is thus putting pressure on waste management to develop suitable recycling processes. Still, in the textile sector, waste prevention claimed by policy seems to be a pious wish.

The reliable estimates are essential to developing measures to reduce plastic pollution and to make successes measurable and visible. For this reason, the cross-border project "PlasticFreeDanube" (PFD), which is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund within the framework of Interreg Slovakia-Austria, aims to gain new knowledge on this topic for the Danube.

The EU has established concrete recycling targets for packaging waste for 2025 and 2030. Furthermore, the methodology for calculating the corresponding recycling rates has been amended. The new and stricter calculation methodology will potentially lead to decreases of the current rates. This will be particularly the case for plastic packaging, where denkstatt calculated a gap far above 10 % compared to smaller decreases (> 2 %) to be expected for glass or steel packaging.