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VšĮ "Žiedinė ekonomika"

ZE

Circular economy in Lithuania, this includes changing legislation, educating about sustainable consumption and production

Lobbying Activity

Response to Food waste reduction targets

28 Oct 2021

We greatly value food and every loss of it comes at a cost to the environment due to time and resources used in producing it. We believe that the 50 % food waste reduction target until 2030 target must be mandatory accross whole food chain. This ought to start with farms and end with consumers. There are great examples how supermarket chains could be legally made to donate edible food unfit for sale (countries such as France and Czech republic are primary examples). This could be replicated through other parts of food supply chains. Also EU JRC has made very good studies on which food waste reduction policies work and which do not. Applying them broadly with significant funding could help achieve significat reductions in food loss.
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Response to Policy framework on biobased, biodegradable and compostable plastics

27 Oct 2021

First and foremost bioplastics should comply with EU waste management hierarchy and not do any harm to the environment and the existing waste management system itself. Priority should be given to the reuse/refill systems. There are more negative than positive impacts: - Bioplastics in most cases do not have any environmental advantages in comparison to the conventional plastics (using life cycle assesment). - Bioplastics (recyclable and nonbiodegradable/noncompostable) have negative impact on plastics recycling. In large quantities they have an effect on the end product. - Bioplastics (compostable/biodegradable) have negative impact on plastics recycling, because they are a source of pollution. - Bioplastics (unless they are compostable bags) have negative impact on biowaste composting/AD, as those processes are not designed to treat bioplastics (if noncompostable/ nonbiodegradable) and in most cases (with exception of Italy) not desined to compost plastics (if compostable/biodegradable) due to longer time needed for a full degradation than the process for biowaste. - Bioplastics are confusing and misinforming consumers regarding them being "more environmentally friendly" than conventional plastics. There are a lot of studies such as ECOS (https://rethinkplasticalliance.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Rethink-Plastic-ECOS-position-paper-bio-based-plastics-July-2021-plastics.pdf) that show negative impact of bioplastics.
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Response to Updating the EU Emissions Trading System

12 Nov 2020

As we are in unprecedented times regarding climate change and biodiversity loss, we should take adequate measures to counter these challenges. An expansion of a success case - EU emissions trading system (ETS) would be a very timely and welcoming move. First, by removing exceptions that are applied to MSW and hazardous waste incineration facilities. Secondly by expanding it to lower size industrial facilities with as large as 10 MW capacities. Including transport would make a shift towards existing more sustainable solutions such as electric vehicles. Finally, including agriculture and tying it with direct payments (from CAP) would make further very significant effect as soil would be viewed not only as "infinite resource" but as an ecosystem, which can either store or release carbon depending on farming practises. These measures would be sufficient enough to make a very significant change in the coming decade. Thank you!
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Response to Climate change mitigation and adaptation taxonomy

10 Apr 2020

We welcome the exclusion of waste to energy incineration from the Taxonomy as it harms the circular economy. For further development of the Taxonomy on climate change mitigation and adaptation activities we recommend the Commission to consider also the climate impact of waste incineration. The Eurostat data showsthat the emisisons from incineration of waste with energy recovery have increased by 288% and are above 40Mt (2017). WTE incineration is also far more carbon intensive than energy generated from fossil fuels such as gas (370g CO2eq/kWh). Due to the progressive decarbonisation of the electricity sector, power generated by incinerators is therefore increasingly out of step with the sector’s approach to limiting climate change impacts in the future. It is therefore environmentally irresponsible to continue to promote WTE incineration infrastructures that are already largely outperformed by the EU average and, even worse, by conventional fossil-fuel energy generation such as gas. Promoting WTE electricity from incineration would make it impossible to facilitate the ambitious emissions reductions in the energy sector that would align with the Paris Agreement. If we genuinely seek to limit global average temperature increase to below 1.5°C, we must end WTE incineration as soon as possible. References: https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/european-union-greenhouse-gas-inventory-2019/european-union-greenhouse-gas-inventory-2019/viewfile#pdfjs.action=download https://ukwin.org.uk/files/pdf/UKWIN-2018-Incineration-Climate-Change-Report.pdf Kind regards Domantas Tracevicius and Ziedine ekonomika team
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