The European Bio-waste Conference in Barcelona 15th of February 2010
The Spanish EU Presidency had the topics BIOWASTE and SOIL on its environmental agenda. In this respect as a kind of kick off event a Biowaste Conference was organised at the 15th of February 2010 in Barcelona in co-operation with the Agència de Residus de Catalunya. As a follow-up to the Brussels Conference of June 2009 in Brussel (see proceedings below) it will give an update on the latest policy developments by the Commission/DG Environment which is mainly the Impact Assessment on Biowaste and its results. The policy aspects will be one part of the conference, in a second one European developments will be presented which showed the relevance of biowaste collection and the treatment.
Biowaste accounts for 30 % to 45 % of municipal solid waste across Europe. This is why European Commission DG Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas stated:“The EU needs to become a resource-efficient, recycling society and bio-waste offers great opportunities. Once our resources become waste we must find ways to recycle them. Energy recovery from bio-waste in the form of biogas or thermal energy will help in the fight against climate change, and quality compost can contribute greatly to healthy soil and biodiversity. We need to work with stakeholders to ensure that the waste management options we choose bring the greatest benefit to our environment”.
As additionally requested in the Waste Framework Directive the Commission started in December 2008 an evaluation process to explore the impacts and options of a bio-waste legislation within the European Union. As a first step in December 2008 the European Commission published the Green Paper on biowaste and afterwards launched the consultation process on the Impact Assessment.
In order to work with the stakeholders this joint conference on “Biowaste – Need for EU legislation?” in Brussels was organised at 9th and 10th of June 2009 by the DG Environment of the European Commission, the Environment Ministry of the Czech Republic, the Public Waste Agency of Flanders (OVAM) and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.
This website compiles the outcomes of the conference, all presentations and the panel discussions with more than 200 participating stakeholders from 23 countries.
01.12.2009 Full proceedings of the Conference including discussions,
presentations and panel statements are available here (7MB -pdf)