European Parliament passes resolution banning hazardous plastics

The European Parliament has passed a resolution seeking a ban on the most hazardous plastics and certain plastic bags by 2020, as part of the European Union (EU) strategy to reduce plastic waste in the environment. Members of European Parliament (MEPs) also urged the EU to introduce binding plastic waste recycling targets.
 
In the resolution, MEPs stressed that plastic waste is damaging the environment due to both weak enforcement of EU legislation on waste and the lack of specific EU laws on plastic wastes, despite their particularities.
 
MEPs propose that specific binding targets for collecting and sorting up to 80% of waste should be included in EU legislation. Mandatory criteria for recycling, and harmonised ones for collecting and sorting waste, should be framed to ensure fair competition, they said, adding that the current EU directive on packaging waste should also be reviewed.
 
Parliament urged the European Commission to make proposals by 2014 to phase out the landfilling of recyclable and recoverable waste by 2020 and discourage the incineration of this waste. It also urges that plastic waste should not be used for energy recovery unless all other possibilities have been exhausted.
 
MEPs believe that the most dangerous plastics should be withdrawn from the market. The use of single-use plastic bags should be phased out wherever possible. They also call for bolder steps to tackle illegal exports and dumping of plastic waste.
 
MEPs stressed that the economic potential of recycling plastics is still largely unexploited. Only 25% of plastic wastes are currently recycled. Fully enforcing EU legislation on waste could save Euro 72 billion a year, boost the annual turnover of EU waste management and recycling firms by Euro 42 billion and create over 400,000 jobs by 2020, said MEPs.