Op-Ed: “The Circular Economy in Action: The New EU Rules to Prevent Food Waste and Used Textiles”

A Long Row to Hoe

Environmental law moves at a snail’s pace. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the EU adopted several sectoral directives with ambitious recycling targets for packaging and packaging waste (Directive 94/62/EC), electrical and electronic waste (Directive 2002/96/EC), and end-of-life vehicles (Directive 2000/53/EC). Waste law made significant progress, but harmonisation stalled in the early 2000s. In the absence of harmonised rules, Member States had to regulate various waste-producing sectors. Bolstered by the European Green Deal of December 2019, the European Commission adopted an action plan on the circular economy on 30 March 2022.  A swathe of new regulations on batteries (2023/1542), packaging and packaging waste (