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December 3rd, 2015:

EU Circular Economy Package Arrives

Dec 3rd, 2015
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http://waste-management-world.com/a/eu-circular-economy-package-arrives

After months of deliberation following the axing of the previously agreed Circular Economy Package, the European Commission adopted a new package that will set a common EU target for recycling 65% of municipal waste by 2030.

In addition, the package see a common EU target of 75% for recycling packaging waste by 2030 and a binding target to reduce landfill to maximum of 10% of all waste by 2030.

According to the Commission the package will stimulate Europe’s transition towards a circular economy which will boost global competitiveness, foster sustainable economic growth and generate new jobs. To help facilitate this transition the Commission accompanied the CE Package with its Action Plan on the Circular Economy which sets out measures to “close the loop” and tackle all phases in the lifecycle of a product, from manufacture to disposal.

The plan also includes a number of actions that the Commission said will target market barriers in specific sectors or material streams, such as plastics, food waste, critical raw materials, construction and demolition, biomass and bio-based products, as well as horizontal measures in areas such as innovation and investment.

The Commission added that the aim of the plan is to focus on issues where EU level action brings real added value and is capable of making a difference on the ground.

Unsurprisingly for such a highly anticipated announcement, many in the industry were voice their opinion on the package, which was broadly welcomed with some reservations.

“I welcome the new proposed Directive on waste from the Commission,” ISWA president, David Newman, told WMW.

“I am very glad they have taken into account many of the comments made by ISWA in our meetings with them. In particular the need for harmonised data and reporting comes out clearly. The move towards restricting landfilling of biowaste is very important as is the overall 10% landfill target for 2030. Derogations for some member countries are common sense,” he said.

However, Newman also cautioned that the the package needed to be firmer on the collection of biowaste.

“The wording needs strengthening to ensure compliance, because ‘should’ and ‘shall’ are different concepts. It is a severe weakness of the proposal that such collection is conditioned by feasability questions as revised article 22 indicates.”

That was a view echoed by the Resource Association’s Ray Georgeson.

“Proposals on food waste and separate collection appear to be weaker than many of us had hoped for, and the introduction of TEEF as a successor (for biowaste) to TEEP may not prove to be the Commission’s finest moment,” he said.

Beijing’s pollution saviour: Mother Nature

Dec 3rd, 2015
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Construction cranes are shrouded in smog in Beijing. Photo: Bloomberg

Residents say officials now rely on weather to control capital’s dire smog

What a difference a day makes. The arrival of strong winds overnight on Tuesday blew away much of the heavy smog that had choked Beijing for days, allowing the capital’s air quality to return to a healthy level within hours.

A cold front from the north reached the capital at about 11pm on Tuesday, and by midnight the concentration of PM2.5 particles, considered most dangerous to human health, had dropped to 22 – considered a healthy level – in the suburbs and 88 in the city. Residents woke up to a clear blue sky with cold, fresh air as the concentration of the fine particulates dropped to below 10 from more than 500 on Tuesday.

Internet users were quick to share pictures of the city’s clear skyline on social media while at the same time expressing in frustration that the capital was relying entirely on weather changes to fight the smog.

Officials, when questioned why the highest-level red pollution warning alert was not issued as the pollution index reached a hazardous level over the previous five days, explained that this was due to technological limitations.

Peng Yingdeng, a researcher at the National Engineering Research Centre for Urban Pollution Control, said air pollution had been dropping for three years, yet the weather – especially this year’s severe El Nino conditions – made the air quality worse. Beijing is prone to spells of low pressure that trap air pollutants closer to the ground.

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Some questioned why a red alert, the highest level in a four-tier system, was not issued to help residents cope better. A red alert would force schools to shut down, cars to stay off the road on alternate days and construction projects halted.

The city’s Environmental Protection Administration has been under fire for issuing and maintaining only the orange alert even though air quality was so bad that readings were off the charts.

Unfavourable weather, together with coal-burning in Beijing’s suburban area and vehicle exhaust emissions, were to blame for the heavy smog, authorities said. (CTA: note that goods vehicles can only enter Beijing and other big Mainland cities after midnight)

According to Beijing Severe Air Pollution Contingency Plan, a red alert can only be issued by the Beijing Emergency Management Office after being approved by the city mayor. It should be issued 24 hours in advance if air quality is forecast to be severe, with the air quality index over 300, for 72 hours.

But Peng said it was not possible to forecast air pollution precisely for a period longer than three days, and the Beijing environmental watchdog was upgrading its air quality projection system at a cost of 30 million yuan to extend forecasts to five days.

When air quality plummeted last Friday, the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Centre forecast it to improve on Saturday. But the AQI nosedived on Sunday and continued to drop on Monday and Tuesday, an environmental protection Administration official told The Beijing News.

“But technical limitation is no excuse,” Peng said. “The local environmental protection authority could have warned people of the severity of the smog.”

Source URL: http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/1886320/beijings-pollution-saviour-mother-nature