Circular Economy Action Plan – Status of implementation and outlook© Witzenhausen-Institut fĂĽr Abfall, Umwelt und Energie GmbH (4/2023)
The European Commission adopted the new circular economy action plan (CEAP) in March 2020. It is one of the main building blocks of the European Green Deal, Europe’s new agenda for sustainable growth. The EU’s transition to a circular economy will reduce pressure on natural resources and will create sustainable growth and jobs. It is also a prerequisite to achieve the EU’s 2050 climate neutrality target and to halt biodiversity loss. The new action plan announces initiatives along the entire life cycle of products. The presentation gives an overview about the status and implementation of planned initiatives as well as what further measures can be expected in the near future.
Tex2Mat: Recycling of industrial PA textiles to fibres and injection moulded parts© Lehrstuhl fĂĽr Abfallverwertungstechnik und Abfallwirtschaft der Montanuniversität Leoben (11/2020)
The project Tex2Mat is a cooperation of several manufacturing companies and uni-versities. In the course of the project two waste streams from textile companies were analysed, one was textiles made from a mixture of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) and cotton and the second one was a mixture of polyamides (PA). In this subproject regarding the PA the following members were selected in a way that all processing steps were represented along the complete value chain. The main objective the project was to analyse the whole value chain from the loom to collecting the waste, the recycling process and the production of the original product or other technical demanding products.
The circular packaging design guideline and holistic sustainability assessment in circular economy© Lehrstuhl fĂĽr Abfallverwertungstechnik und Abfallwirtschaft der Montanuniversität Leoben (11/2020)
The FH Campus Wien Circular Packaging Design Guideline provide recommendations for circular design for the whole supply chain. Circular design is a necessary prerequisite to achieve the goals of the European Circular Economy Package which requires full recyclability of packaging by 2030. Circular packaging should re-duce resource consumption and environmental impacts of packaging. The assessment of packaging sustainability requires the calculation of direct and indirect environmental impacts and circularity at the same time. A method for holistic sustainability assessment of packaging has been proposed by FH Campus Wien and developed in an ECR-working group (Efficient Consumer Response) with the participation of a number of companies along the whole supply chain (brand owners, retailers, packaging manufacturers and packaging systems).
Circular economy from an SDG perspective: A multi-stakeholder process for developing policy options© Lehrstuhl fĂĽr Abfallverwertungstechnik und Abfallwirtschaft der Montanuniversität Leoben (11/2020)
Based on a longitudinal case study (the UniNEtZ project in Austria), which includes a multi-stakeholder involvement, we investigate the process of developing CE policies for the Austrian Federal Government from an SDG perspective. Within this context, the main research question is how multi-stakeholder processes can enable the development of CE policy options. The study thus contributes to providing a structured approach of how different stake-holders from academia, industry, research funding agencies and government collaborate, how knowledge is created and transferred within this multi-stakeholder process, and what outputs, outcomes and impacts can be realized at the national level in the context of developing CE policies using an SDG framework.
Packaging recycling in EU member states – requirements from the circular economy package© Lehrstuhl fĂĽr Abfallverwertungstechnik und Abfallwirtschaft der Montanuniversität Leoben (11/2020)
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.
PlasticFreeDanube: Composition of macro-plastic waste in and along the Danube River© Lehrstuhl fĂĽr Abfallverwertungstechnik und Abfallwirtschaft der Montanuniversität Leoben (11/2020)
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.
Reporting of food waste in the EU – Results of current estimates in Germany© Lehrstuhl fĂĽr Abfallverwertungstechnik und Abfallwirtschaft der Montanuniversität Leoben (11/2020)
In February 2019, the German Federal Cabinet adopted the 'National Strategy for Reducing Food Waste', setting a framework for the future direction of this initiative. Among other things, it stipulated that an inter-ministerial "Indicator 12.3 Working Group" should prepare the data bases and methods for nationwide balancing of food waste generation (baseline). Based on existing 2015 data, this status quo analysis will be used as a starting point to agree on milestones for the respective sectors.
The new Waste Framework Directive and its impact on textile waste© Lehrstuhl fĂĽr Abfallverwertungstechnik und Abfallwirtschaft der Montanuniversität Leoben (11/2020)
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.
Chemical Current Sources Management in the European Union and Russia in the Context of Extended Producer Responsibility© Lehrstuhl fĂĽr Abfallverwertungstechnik und Abfallwirtschaft der Montanuniversität Leoben (11/2018)
The rapid development of the electronic industry in the post-industrial society contributes to the increase in the production volumes of chemical currentsources (CCS). This article is concerned with the extended producer responsibility (EPR) concept and the mechanisms of its implementation in the spent chemical current sources (SCCS) management in Russia and in the EU countries. The EPR organization models for greening the SCCS lifecycle in these countries using the existing legal basis of the European Union and Russia are presented.
The new European Waste Catalogue and the POPs© Wasteconsult International (5/2017)
The European Waste Catalogue (EWC) provides a common system of waste classification in accordance with the waste law throughout the EU, with the purpose to improve the efficiency of waste management activities.