Bio-waste Separate Collection Takes Off

Although another country has touched down on the moon this week, down to earth issues like waste management continue to struggle to get off the ground of this planet — let alone reach another.

An advancement in the world of waste is the EU’s recent mandate for the separate collection of bio-waste across all its Member States (MS). The excitement, however, must be tempered with reality.

Bio-waste is the key to achieving recycling targets in the Waste Framework Directive and the landfill diversion targets in the Landfill Directive. Since bio-waste is the largest single stream of municipal waste, efficient and sustainable management is necessary to reach these targets. Bio-waste management is a cross-cutting driver with ramifications in many sectorial policies.

There is still significant distance between where we are and where we would like to be. Only some EU regions and MS have taken action to implement bio-waste collection and treatment as identified in the figure 1, guided by the requirements to meet the targets mentioned and incentivised by the landfill and incinerator taxes and complementary landfill bans [*].