Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-05-23-Speech-3-418-000"
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"en.20120523.21.3-418-000"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, rapporteur Gerbrandy, I once had a beautiful orange kettle, made in the Netherlands. At one point, a part got broken and I was not able to get it repaired. The part was not available but, apart from that, the kettle was actually still quite good. However, because we live in a throwaway society, it was ultimately cheaper to buy a new kettle – a less beautiful one, mind you. It does not have to be that way. We need to change that.
It is good that we are once again discussing the fact that the Earth is finite and so are its resources, because nothing has changed, as the Club of Rome said in its famous 1972 report ‘Limits to growth’. It is now 2012, forty years down the line, and the situation is still the same, as indeed it will be in forty years’ time. To put it simply, it really is time that we started doing something about this, something concrete.
In the past two years, we have presented at least two strategies on this issue: the commodity strategy and, now, the efficient use of resources. Therefore, it is vital that we start to integrate this into our society, but not in a way that says people have to put on another jumper in winter or that they should consume less. We need to do it in a way that will appeal to everyone and that will ultimately lead to the efficiency that we are all talking about.
Highly specific proposals include new business models which are aimed, among other things, at repair and not replacement every time, and which are aimed at the use of secondary raw materials. Besides, it is often new models that seem to set the trend, not new technology. And so we really have to focus on that. We need better and clearer labelling, and not with five different labels: one for fair trade and the other for energy efficiency. What I want is to be able to see in a single glance what kind of a product this is. We also need better handling of recyclable materials, so that they do not end up in landfill or incinerators.
From the abstract to the concrete: Europe’s environmental footprint now covers ten football pitches and, before long, with all the people who will be in the world in 2050, we will have only one football pitch for everything we need – our energy, our food and our resources. As a result, we need to move very fast. Allow me to give you just one example: in 2006, fertiliser cost USD 200 and now it costs USD 600. That is three times as much in six years. The urgency seems to be very clear to me. We have to do something. Now. Not only for the environment, but also for the economy."@en1
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