MEPs back EU waste directive compromise

As a new article informs us, the European parliament has accepted a controversial deal with EU member states on the revision of the waste framework directive. Despite strong criticism from some deputies that the prearranged deal with EU governments had severely weakened the directive, MEPs backed the package in Strasbourg on Tuesday.
Commenting ahead of the vote, parliament’s rapporteur, British conservative deputy Caroline Jackson, said that negotiating an agreement with EU ministers had been a “long and tortuous road”. “There was much resistance to what we wanted to do and council drove a very hard bargain. This is the best deal available. Anyone who thinks that we could get anything better by going to conciliation would be deceiving themselves.”
The agreement sets out mandatory recycling targets to be met by 2020: 50 per cent for paper, metal, plastic, and glass from household waste and 70 per cent for construction and demolition waste. Despite the agreement on recycling targets, new provisions on the prevention of waste, the introduction of a five-step “hierarchy” of waste management options, and plans to develop national waste prevention programmes, many MEP were scathing of the final package.
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