This is Directive (EU) 2018/851 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2018 amending Directive 2008/98/EC on waste (Text with EEA relevance).

The Directive has direct impact on how waste is treated and managed at regional and local level. This Directive contains binding provisions related to the waste management hierarchy (Art. 4) and binding targets for reaching re-use and recycling rates for different streams of waste (Art. 11). Art. 11 requires Member States to take measures aimed at promoting high-quality recycling through separate collection at municipal level. The Directive obliges Member States to ensure separate waste collection to facilitate or improve preparing for re-use, recycling and other recovery operations (Art. 10 on recovery; Art. 21 on waste oils; and Art. 22 for biowaste). Separate collection of textiles (Art. 11) and hazardous waste (Art. 20) is obligatory by 1 January 2025.

The Directive also sets the basis for Extended Producer Responsibility – a mandatory economic tool that is crucial for municipalities to finance collection of certain waste streams (Art. 8). Annex IVa of the Directive lists a number of economic instruments and other measures to provide incentives for the application of the waste hierarchy, some of which can be deployed at a regional and/or local (municipal) level too, e.g. ‘pay-as-you-throw’ schemes, deposit-refund schemes, sustainable public procurement and others.

Furthermore, some of the waste prevention measures outlined in Art. 9 can be implemented on a regional and/or local (municipal) level. This includes encouraging the re-use of products and the setting up of systems promoting repair and re-use activities (including for electrical and electronic equipment, textiles and furniture as well as packaging and construction materials and products) or encouraging food donation and other redistribution for human consumption, prioritising human use over animal feed and the reprocessing into non-food products.

The establishment and preparation of waste management plans (Art. 28) can also be done on a regional and/or local level if having more than one plan per Member State is deemed more appropriate. Furthermore, Member States shall establish waste prevention programmes, for example, as part of their waste management plans (Art 29).

More information about the Waste Framework Directive can be found here: https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/waste-framework-directive_en

Practice examples of legal solutions from around Europe are outlined in this brief prepared by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB): https://eeb.org/library/explained-europes-new-laws-for-separate-waste-collection/

Presented examples cover the following topics:
 

• example of transposing the general separate collection definition from the WFD and Introduction of measures to ensure that separately collected waste enables high-quality recycling (Scotland, UK);
• example of hazardous waste collection (Flanders, Belgium);
• example of waste oils collection (Greece);
• example of textiles collection (France);
• example of biowaste collection (Slovenia), home composting (France, the city of Besançon), ban on landfilling and incineration of separately collected waste (Flanders, Belgium);
• examples of additional measure to boost separate collection (Italy, the region of Flanders, Slovenia, the City of Ljubljana).

• Date of document: 30/05/2018; Date of signature
• Date of effect: 04/07/2018; Entry into force Date pub. +20 See Art 2.1
• Date of transposition: 05/07/2020; Adoption See Art 2.1
• Date of end of validity: No end date