The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) published in October an own-initiative Opinion on waste management.
In this document, the Committee calls for additional EU and national policies to improve waste separation and collection systems. It also strongly advocates for the recovery of nutrients through best-practice treatment, recycling and recovery to capture nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus or potassium. In this regard, it recommends to set recovery targets for phosphorus and nitrogen and to revise EU legislation that prohibits the use of recovered nutrients, for instance in organic farming. Finally, it stresses the need to create functional markets for recovered materials to ensure a level playing field for virgin and secondary materials across the EU and to avoid fragmented regulation at national level.
The document can be accessed here.