'Extremely ambitious' recycling target will require leadership

摘要

The European Commission's announcement of higher recycling targets has been welcomed by the ICE as "rightly bringing the need for a circular economy to the fore". However, it also warned that the new 70% target for municipal recycling was "extremely ambitious", and would require strategic leadership and coordination. The Commission's new directive sets out a number of proposals to drive forward a transition from a linear to a "circular economy", where waste is managed in such a way that it becomes a resource - a move the ICE called for in its State of the Nation: Waste report in 2011, and reiterated in its State of the Nation: Infrastructure 2014 scorecard launched in June, which graded the UK's waste infrastructure C+ or "requires attention".