Lobbying Activity
Meeting with Christophe Clergeau (Member of the European Parliament)
25 Sept 2024 · Plastics
Meeting with François Thiollet (Member of the European Parliament)
23 Apr 2024 · Echange/Rencontre
Meeting with Marie Toussaint (Member of the European Parliament)
20 Nov 2023 · recyclage des déchets et déchets d'emballages
Meeting with Marie Toussaint (Member of the European Parliament) and SURFRIDER FOUNDATION EUROPE
14 Sept 2023 · recyclage emballages
Meeting with Aurore Lalucq (Member of the European Parliament)
7 Nov 2022 · directive emballages et déchets d'emballages
Meeting with Marina Mesure (Member of the European Parliament) and SURFRIDER FOUNDATION EUROPE
12 Oct 2022 · Déchets, économie circulaire et recyclage
Response to Food waste reduction targets
26 Oct 2021
Food waste constitutes a substantial proportion of municipal waste, in addition to the waste produced in production, processing and distribution. In landfills it is a source of the greenhouse gas methane, in waste incinerations it reduces energy recovery because of its high water content.
Even more importantly, food wasted means a need to produce more food and food production has a huge environmental cost. It contributes to global heating e.g., through production of methane, direct & indirect use of fossil fuels and deforestation. It impacts biodiversity, e.g. through land & water use, entry of pesticides & fertilizers.
Therefore Zero Waste France, France's major environmental NGO focused on consumption & waste, welcomes the intention of the European Commission to set-up binding food waste reduction targets across the EU and calls for a high level of ambition.
We strongly favor “Option S1 - target covering the whole food supply chain, from farm gate to final consumer” as the high proportion of pre-retail food waste (possibly 59% of the total EU food waste) needs to be addressed in a holistic strategy.
We favor “Option E2 - targets expressed as absolute amounts, i.e. in kilograms per capita per year to be achieved by 2030 (per country)” for increased fairness towards countries that have already started to address the issue.
We favor “Option T3 – collective target on EU level – based on MS contributions” and recommend that member states should reach the same kilograms per capita target that will contribute to reaching a 50% reduction target by 2030.
We strongly recommend that the European Commission sets a target of reduction of at least 50%.
We consider it essential the targets favor the use of food for human consumption, as this is the only approach that limits the huge “upstream” environmental impact of food production. Use as animal feed or for the generation of materials should be limited to food unfit for human consumption. Composting or (under certain conditions) methanization are valuable approaches to treat biowaste but should strictly be limited to waste that cannot be consumed as food. We urge the European Commission to define the targets in a way that excludes the non-food use of food, including food that is difficult to sell in conventional commercial channels.
Beyond the above comments, Zero Waste France expresses our support for the feedback of Zero Waste Europe and for the NGO joint letter on the EC commitment on tackling food waste in the Farm to Fork Strategy (https://foodpolicycoalition.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NGO-Joint-letter_EC-Commitment-on-Tackling-Food-Waste-in-the-F2F-Strategy.pdf).
Read full responseResponse to Policy framework on biobased, biodegradable and compostable plastics
21 Oct 2021
Zero Waste France salue cette initiative qui vient répondre à une préoccupation de plus en plus présente : à l'heure où le cadre législatif interdit certains plastiques à usage unique via la directive de 2018, on peut constater l'essor des plastiques dits "bioplastiques" dans une logique de substitution.
Cet essor n'est pourtant pas sans poser question.
En premier lieu, le développement de solutions de substitution qui ne sortent pas de l'usage unique s'inscrit à rebours de la hiérarchie des modes de traitement des déchets qui prescrit la prévention et le réemploi en priorité.
Par ailleurs, la biodégradabilité supposée des plastiques n'indique pas ses conditions de réalisation ; comme évoqué dans la feuille de route, les plastiques dits biodégradables se dégradent le plus souvent en unités de compostage industriel, dans des conditions qui ne sont pas celles du compostage domestique ou de la nature. Alors que les filières de compostage industrielles restent peu développées sur le territoire français, le devenir de ce matériau interroge, sachant qu'il ne s'insère pas nécessairement dans les filières de recyclage, loin s'en faut.
D'autre part, il convient de souligner que la biomasse utilisée en partie dans les plastiques dits biosourcés implique une accaparation des terres agricoles, une pression sur les surfaces et l'utilisation de ressources naturelles dont l'impact sur la biodiversité peut être important.
Enfin, du point de vue des consommateurs, la mention "biodégradable" s'avère trompeuse puisqu'elle ne dit rien des conditions de cette biodégradabilité ; c'est dans cette perspective qu'elle sera interdite à partir du 1er janvier 2022 dans le droit français. De même, le terme "biosourcé" n'indique pas précisément la part effectivement biosourcée par rapport à celle pétrosourcée.
A ces égards, le cadre législatif devrait encadrer précisément l'usage de ces différentes mentions afin d'éviter le greenwashing que peuvent permettre les bioplastiques.
En général, l'usage des plastiques dits biosourcés et/ou biodégradables doit être précisément encadrés : il ne s'agit pas de remplacer des plastiques conventionnels par ces plastiques qui restent à usage unique et dont les impacts sur le climat et la biodiversité ne sont pas moindres pour autant.
Read full responseResponse to EU strategy for sustainable textiles
1 Feb 2021
Zero Waste France (ZWF), France’s major environmental NGO focused on issues of consumption & waste, welcomes the Commission’s initiative to develop an EU vision for transforming a linear, highly polluting EU textile sector into an ecologically sustainable alternative, based on the circular economy model. We are concerned, however, by what we perceive to be a limited ambition, focused on downstream, end-of-pipe approaches.
The evolution of the textile market over the recent years has been characterized by an increase of overall volume and a reduction in average quality & duration of use, driven by “fast fashion”. While the secondhand market for high quality clothing is expanding, there is today no satisfactory down-stream solution for low quality clothing. The “Primark-effect” of an increasing proportion of textiles in landfill and incineration is well documented, but we also consider that down-cycling to isolation material or export for reuse in low-income countries as ecologically problematic. The huge detrimental upstream effects of textile production and its downstream pollution can only be tackled by a reduction in the volumes produced & traded. This requires addressing the objective & subjective factors that reduce the lifetime of textile products and lead to their overconsumption.
We see three major axes on which the EU roadmap should focus:
1.) A reduction in the volume of global textile production and consumption
The disconnect between textile consumption from actual needs has to be reduced by regulating communication & advertising. Perceived obsolescence and the promotion of overconsumption and shopping for pleasure alone needs to be discouraged.
The EU could also set global targets towards the reduction of new textile products place in market.
Textile design for durability, reuse and repairability should become a priority.
The right to repair needs to be applied to textile products.
2.) Textiles designed to reduce their environmental impact during production, usage & disposal
The production & import of textiles containing hazardous substances of concern needs to be tightly regulated and preferably banned. Microplastics shedding from textile has to be taken into account in their environmental evaluation.
Consumer information on the ecological footprint (climate, water…) and the chemicals contained in textiles needs to be improved on the European scale.
A proliferation of “green textile” labels of uncertain value should be avoided and replaced by a stringent European label of sustainable textile products.
3.) Appropriate end-of life treatment of textiles
Export for reuse of low-quality used textiles to low-income countries is a significant concern and needs to be regulated. “Export for reuse” should not automatically be counted as reuse in the waste hierarchy if it leads to a short additional usage followed by inappropriate disposal.
While down-cycling to textiles to isolation material remains preferable to landfill or incineration, it retains only marginal value and should not be promoted as an ecological solution.
Repair and reuse as textiles within in the European Union needs to be promoted over down-cycling or export for reuse.
Read full responseResponse to Climate change mitigation and adaptation taxonomy
16 Dec 2020
Zero Waste France, the major French NGO dealing with issues of waste, welcomes the exclusion of waste incineration (“waste-to-energy”) from the taxonomy for green investments. Indeed, the construction of new waste-to-energy facilities (including gasification, pyrolysis…) impede successful climate mitigation through:
- The direct emissions of the waste incinerators,
- The diversion of materials such as plastics, carton & paper from recycling, as recycling has a better carbon- and resource balance,
- The diversion of organic matter (biowaste) from separate collection followed by composting, which captures carbon in the soils or anaerobic digestion, which produces biogas with a more favorable carbon balance, and
- The lock-in effect of the high investment, long life infrastructures, preventing a continuous improvement of waste management.
We are concerned, however, that technologies assimilated to waste incineration, such as burning refuse-derived fuel (RDF) in cement plants, are treated differently and are not excluded. This is even more surprising as the report from Technical Expert Group (TEG) concluded that” co-incineration of RDF has significant impacts on health and environment due to the polluting nature of the associated emissions and may undermine waste minimisation efforts”. The "Do no significant harm” (DNSH) criteria of Taxonomy regulation label activities leading to a significant increase in waste incineration as harmful to a circular economy, which should preclude the inclusion of co-incineration of RDF.
We also regret that for the manufacture of plastics in primary formtheTEG recommendation of additional criteria for consumer goods, namely an independent sector study confirming that at least 90% of the type of plastic manufactured is (a) not used for single use consumer products, and/or (b) based on recycled plastics as feedstock, was not retained. In line with the Directive on the reduction of the impact of certain plastic products on the environment (SUP Directive) and in the view of fostering a circular economy, the inclusion of manufacturing of plastics in primary form needs to take the ultimate fate of the product into consideration We therefore consider the reintroduction of the criteria of an “independent sector study confirming that at least 90% of the type of plastic manufactured is not used for single use consumer products” as essential.
Read full responseResponse to A new Circular Economy Action Plan
20 Jan 2020
While 90 % of biodiversity loss and water stress as well as 50 % of greenhouse gas production are caused by resource extraction and processing (www.resourcepanel.org/global-resources-outlook-2019), the EC’s Roadmap warns that “Global material use has tripled in the past decades and without intervention, it is expected to double in the next 40 years”.
This clearly unsustainable situation warrants drastic action, particularly in a region like Europe that consumes more than its fair share of Global resources. Unfortunately, the Circular Economy Action Plan does not demonstrate the required level of ambition, nor the “out of the box” thinking to challenge and redesign a broken system of production and consumption. Past attempts to decouple resource use from the GDP have been overtaken by GDP growth and new resource-intensive product offerings, from smartphones to bitcoins, time and again. The new priority must be to uncouple an improvement in happiness and well-being from an unsustainable GDP growth.
Throughout Europe citizens (https://riendeneuf.org/en/) and pioneering municipalities, such as Capannori (https://zerowasteeurope.eu/library/the-story-of-capannori/), Besancon (https://zerowasteeurope.eu/library/the-story-of-besancon/), Roubaix (https://zerowasteeurope.eu/library/the-story-of-roubaix/) and many others have demonstrated that drastic reductions in resource use and waste production are possible without negative impact on quality of life or employment. It is time for companies, national governments and the European Union to follow the citizen’s lead and step up to the challenge.
The waste hierarchy is the cornerstone of EU waste legislation, but still the proposed Circular Economy Action Plan places too much emphasis on approaches low in the hierarchy, such as recycling. We urge the European Commission to turn the plan back on its feet with a rigorous focus on the top of the hierarchy: waste prevention and reuse.
Ambitious quantitative & enforced targets for the reduction in the use of virgin materials and the production of waste must be an essential element of any successful circular economy plan. The phase out of plastic, and in particular single use plastic, needs to be accelerated with appropriate legislative & fiscal measures (www.breakfreefromplastic.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Reusable-solutions-full-report_bffp-rpa_single-pages-for-online.pdf).
The prolongation of product lifetimes through ecodesign and reparability is a key underused lever to reduce resource consumption.
Deposit Return Systems for reuse, with their uniquely positive environmental impact and high level of public support, need to be encouraged by mandatory refill targets & standardization of packaging and be expanded beyond only bottles (https://zerowasteeurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/2019_08_22_zwe_drs_manifesto.pdf).
European environmental and waste legislation is suffering from a substantial implementation gap: well sounding EU initiatives are incompletely transcribed into national legislation, application decrees water down the laws and are inconsistently enforced on the ground. Even low-hanging fruit of easy technical solutions are left hanging. E.g. the capture of fluorinated gases with ozone-destroying and/or super-potent greenhouse potential (CFC, HFC…) in the end-of-life treatments of cooling equipments remains patchy, forfeiting a simple low-investment opportunity to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions (https://www.duh.de/fileadmin/user_upload/download/Projektinformation/Kreislaufwirtschaft/Kuehlgeraete/ECOS-DUH_Briefing-Paper_Refrigerators.pdf).
Zero Waste France applauds the European Commission’s recognition with the “European Green Deal” that overcoming the environmental crisis needs to become the central goal of European policy and that a Circular Economy is an essential element to this. We are asking the Commission to translate this goal into more ambitious concrete & enforced action on the ground.
Read full response