Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-02-12-Speech-1-116"
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"en.20070212.14.1-116"2
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"Mr President, we are at present producing too much waste in Europe, and the quantity is unfortunately growing day by day. In actual fact, the percentage by which it is increasing is higher than that by which our wealth and also our GDP are increasing. We are now in a position in which every single European produces an average of 500 kilograms of waste per year. That is half a metric ton each, ladies and gentlemen. These are, of course, huge quantities, and something needs to be done about the situation. The primary objective of this legislation must therefore be to reduce the quantity of waste. It is ironic, I think, that we are all totally agreed on the targets but that these are not particularly clear from the Commission’s proposal. We are therefore in favour of having binding targets of both a qualitative and quantitative nature for reducing waste in Europe.
That being said, there are unfortunately other drawbacks too to the Commission’s proposal. A reading of the proposal reveals, firstly, that no great distinction is made between recycling and incinerating waste as long as, if it is incinerated, the waste is used for creating energy. That, emphatically, is wrong. Both processes are referred to as recovery, but appearances are deceptive in this case, as, from an environmental point of view, a huge amount more is recovered through the one process than through the other. For example, washing and then recycling a plastic bottle is obviously much more beneficial to the environment than incinerating it.
There is also another problem with the way in which the Commission has organised matters, for what we need are very specific requirements in those cases in which we are obliged to incinerate waste. That much is obvious. In those cases, we must require use to be made of the best technology in terms both of energy efficiency and also, of course, in terms of preventing the potentially harmful environmental consequences of incinerating waste.
We also wish to prevent cross-border environmental transport or environmental tourism, but that is what we shall have if we regard waste as a commodity.
To sum up: we must reduce the quantity of waste and we must ensure that there is a hierarchy of solutions, in which recycling takes significant precedence over incineration."@en1
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