The European Parliament has voted to approve the revised Waste Framework Directive, meaning it should soon become law. The revised Directive will require Member States to achieve a 50% re-use and recycling target for certain household waste such as paper, metal, plastic and glass, and a 70% target for non-hazardous construction and demolition waste.
It outlines an obligation to develop national waste prevention programmes and sets a five-step "hierarchy" of waste management options according to which prevention is the first option, followed by re-use, recycling, other forms of recovery and then disposal as a last resort. It will also clarify a number of important definitions, such as recovery and recycling and waste itself. Under the revised Directive, incineration could become classed a recovery operation providing it meets certain energy efficiency standards.
Perhaps most crucially, the Directive will revoke and replace the following:
