Calculations suggest that 142 million tonnes of residual waste treatment capacity will be needed by 2035 in order to fulfil the currently-set EU targets on municipal waste.
The peer reviewed Confederation of European Waste-to-Energy Plants (CEWEP) research says the gap will occur assuming the ambitious recycling targets will be achieved for commercial and industrial waste.
Current waste-to-energy capacity is 90 million tonnes and the capacity for co-incineration is approximately 11 million tonnes.
This leaves a gap of around 40 million tonnes, the confederation says.
Paul De Bruycker, the president of CEWEP, said: “The transition towards a circular economy is only just beginning. Today, a quarter of the EU’s municipal waste is still landfilled. Less than half of municipal waste is recycled or composted. The new municipal waste recycling targets alone will not solve these issues.
“I would like to invite the decision makers and all other stakeholders for a dialogue on this topic. We need to work together to find the most sustainable solution for this issue.”
“European waste-to-energy plants are running at full capacity. We will have a residual waste treatment crisis that will result in open fires, illegal shipments and dumping unless we act.
“I would like to invite the decision makers and all other stakeholders for a dialogue on this topic. We need to work together to find the most sustainable solution for this issue.”
CEWEP believes it is “crucial” to ensure the security of residual waste treatment in order to enable a clean circular economy.
It says waste-to-energy contributes to decontamination of the cycle by treating this waste, including:
- sanitary waste items that need to be treated in a hygienic way
- plastics and many other waste streams that contain substances of concern: phthalates, brominated flame retardants, other persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals
- rejects from sorting and recycling facilities: parts of the waste that are of lower quality (for example degraded material that has already been recycled several times), dirty or mixed and therefore impossible to recycle
- residual waste remaining after separate collection.
These waste streams should not be returned to the resources cycle, CEWEP says.
The calculation was peer reviewed by Prognos.
CEWEP is the umbrella association of the operators of waste-to-energy plants across Europe.