Article 174 of the EC Treaty establishes, as general principles applying to any environmental policy of the Community, that preventive action should be taken and that environmental damage should as a priority be rectified at the source. The preventive principle in environmental policy plays a key role, since it helps avoid action being taken in order to repair damages, therefore substantially contributing to the saving of resources. Prevention is at the basis of Directive 75/442/EEC on waste (the so-called 'framework Directive'). This Directive requires Member States to encourage the prevention or reduction of waste production and its harmfulness, in particular by developing cleaner technologies, cleaner products and appropriate techniques for the disposal of dangerous substances contained in recoverable waste. In order to attain this objective Member States are under the obligation, inter alia, to draw up waste management plans.
The 'Community Strategy for Waste Management' (1996) stated that waste prevention is the primary objective for a good EU waste management policy. The 1996 Strategy clearly laid out its main philosophy in terms of waste management policy through the hierarchy of principles of waste management policy and the producer responsibility.
The Sixth Environment Action Program (6th EAP) established four major priorities: i) tackling climate change, ii) nature and biodiversity, iii) environment and health and iv) ensuring the sustainable management of natural resources and wastes. Regarding the specific objectives for waste prevention and management, the 6th EAP affirms that: 'Waste prevention is closely linked with improving resource efficiency, influencing consumption patterns, and reducing the waste arisings associated with products throughout their lifecycle of production, use and the point where the product itself becomes a waste. Action to prevent waste must, therefore, be first and foremost done "at source". This means, on the one hand, finding ways of extending product life-spans, using less resources in products, shifting to cleaner, less wasteful production processes and, on the other hand, influencing consumer choice and demand in the market place in favour of less wasteful products and services.' (see EEB publication "Towards a Low Waste Europe - 10 key issues")
The European Commission has recently started with policy inititiaves and launched the development of a new strategy on the prevention and recycling of waste. Priority waste streams have been identified, for whose a policy mix of prevention, reuse and stronger treatment requirements has been defined. They follow the "producer responsibility principle", which internalizes the social costs of final disposal and treatment of waste to producers. In theory they might also contribute to waste prevention, either by a differentiated price system which favours producers of ecologically designed products or by the direct control of those substances, which create problems further downstream. Those initiatives relate to priority waste streams identified during the early 1990s, especially end-of-life vehicles, waste from electronic equipment, construction waste.
Furthermore the Commission plans to improve the control of hazardous substances, especially heavy metals, ozone-depleting substances and PVC. Improved chemicals control policy might be an important step towards waste prevention. Unfortunately existing European chemicals control policy so far has been ineffective.
It is far from being obvious, if those initiatives really contain first steps towards waste prevention. Resistance against the preventive elements is strong within the Commission and even more by Member States. The Commission tends to shift the responsibility for waste prevention to Member States, which themselves have little scope for action because this would contradict internal market principles. There is strong pressure to undermine the incentives given by producer responsibility systems by the easy and cheap way out of incineration.
Despite such reservations the Commission initiatives will create new responsibilities for cities, retailers and producers to set up appropriate collection and waste separation systems and they create important incentives for more responsible care of waste streams. Therefore they need support from environmental NGOs.
On the agenda are also standards for landfill, incineration, coincineration and composting of waste. If such standards are harmonised at very strict levels and if permitting procedures are integrated into a waste minimisation system, including sorting and pretreatment requirements, those standards might contribute to increase costs of final disposal considerably and hence, if properly allocated to the producers, create incentives up-stream and they might also contribute to the completion of the internal market without waste dumping practices which abuse the different standards. There is a long way to go before achieving such objectives. Therefore, for the time being, the principle of proximity will continue to be unavoidable.
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