A Resource Efficient Europe - more clear steps introduced by the European Parliament

The European Comission's Roadmap to a Reasource Efficient Europe was further developed by the European Parliament. Last week they voted on in the ITRE Committee and proposed some more clear next steps. The most relevant proposals include:

• A general call on the European Commission to establish Joint Task Forces on the three key areas - food&drink, housing, mobility - that will develop European Resource Efficiency Action Plans with more clear resource reduction actions

The European Commission will form these Joint Task Forces with experts from the EU institutions, Member States but also representatives from the private sector and civil society. For the stakeholders in the sustainable construction area will be important to keep an eye on what will happen with the Housing Task Force and get involved in the discussions.

• Calls on the European Commission and EU Member States to agree by 2013 on clear, robust and measurable indicators for economic activity that take account for climate change, biodiversity and resource efficiency

This will mean that new targets will be set in relation with resource efficiency. We are already used with considering the carbon footprint for the economic activities (including building development or renovation). From the resource efficiency perspective new set of indicators and targets associated with each will be introduced. The European Parliament proposed as indicators, besides the carbon footprint, also land footprint, water footprint and material footprint. These indicators and the targets that will be agreed by 2013 should be the basis of new legislative initiatives.

• Several proposals were made related with waste management; the most powerful is the call on the European Commission to propose by 2014 a gradually general ban on waste landfill at the EU level and to phase out by the end of the decade the incineration of recyclable and compostable waste
• The production side is also considered. The European Parliament asks the Commission to extend the scope of the Eco-Design Directive to include additional eco-design requirements to non-energy related products such as recycled content, durability, recyclability, reparability and reusability.

The non-energy related products from the Eco-Design Directive include also groups of products of direct interest for the construction industry such as doors, windows, thermal insulation products, water technologies, HVAC units etc.

•  Taxation is considered as one major tool to influence change - the European Parliament asks Member States to shift towards environmental taxation. On the one hand the voted text encourages Member States to shift the taxation border from labor to natural resources and in the same time asks them to adopt without delay plans for defining and phasing out all environmentally harmful subsidies before 2020.

The  MEP Rapporteur on Resource  Efficiency, Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy, explains in an interview with Euractiv from last fall, his views on the importance of this topic. He will also lead EU's Parliament delegation to Rio+20.

More details:                                              

European Parliament’s press release

“ A Resource Efficient Europe” adopted last week