The Report No 10/2021 entitled “Knowledge for Action - Empowering the transition to a sustainable Europe”, published by the European Environmental Agency, summarises Europe's progress to date on the key environmental and climate goals and gives a concise overview of the main ambitions in five key policy areas. The 4th chapter of the report is devoted to Circular economy and resource use, which is the area SMART WASTE project is focused on.
The report highlights both progresses and shortcomings in the EU path towards circular economy, underlining, for instance, increasing (albeit slow) resource efficiency, , decline of total material consumption , improvements in waste management as well as a slow increase in the rate of circular material use. At the same time, the report underlines a steadily rise of the amount of waste generated in the period 2012‑2018, despite the EU's long-standing goal to reduce it. Moreover, unsustainable use of materials continues to dominate the economic system, whereas the lifespan of products in key value chains decreases while using of single-use products increases.
In general, the report summarises that Europe is not yet on track towards a true circular economy, although a large range of new strategies and policies, including those addressing key value chains and product sustainability adopted in 2020, could change the outlook to 2030 and beyond. In this regard, the report highlights the role of the European Green Deal and the 8th Environment Action Programme proposal in fostering the decoupling of economic growth from resource use and accelerating the transition to a circular economy as well as the Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) supported by the Critical Raw Materials Resilience Communication, the New Industrial Strategy for Europe and the Bioeconomy Strategy.
Last but not least, the report also underlines the usefulness of the Bellagio process and the Bellagio Declaration, which is set of principles for how to ensure that any system for monitoring the transition to a circular economy captures all relevant aspects and involves all relevant parties.
More: https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/knowledge-for-action
