The ten billion euros made available to EU member states to promote the circular economy have “landed in the bin”.
The vast majority of the budget has been spent on waste management and not on innovations to reduce waste generation, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) concludes in a study.
The billions of dollars in funding should drive green innovation between 2016 and 2020 and help companies accelerate the transition to recycling. By 2030, twice as many materials as before should be reused in Europe. Achieving this goal has become “an impossible challenge” given the current use of the billions.
Most of the grant went to waste management, although waste prevention through a circular design would have been a more effective measure, the Court said.
“Conserving materials and minimizing waste are key if the EU is to become resource efficient and achieve the Green Deal’s environmental goals,” said ECA Member Annemie Turtelboom. “But the EU hasn’t done anything so far, so unfortunately the circular economy in European countries has almost come to a standstill.”
The reviewers concluded that the EU’s target of doubling the proportion of materials recycled and returned to the economy by 2030 is “very challenging”.
Circular design as the key to success
Experts have been pointing out for years that the starting point for a circular economy lies in the design of products and that in this phase it is necessary to think about what happens to the product at the end of the use phase.
The study shows that the average percentage of recycled products has increased by just 0.4 percentage points across all 27 EU Member States. In seven countries there have even been steps backwards: Lithuania, Sweden, Romania, Denmark, Luxembourg, Finland and Poland.
The circular economy in EU countries has practically come to a standstill, according to Annemie Turtelboom from the Court of Auditors in her report. After all, there is hardly any evidence that the investments in innovations initiated with the funding have actually contributed to a circular economy. “It is crucial that the EU conserves raw materials and minimizes waste. In this way, resources can be used efficiently and the environmental goals of the Green Deal can be achieved.”
This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.nl