Circular Economy concept and Sustainable Buildings are subjects to EU-wide consultation
On 28 May the European Commission opened a public consultation to collect input to its Circular Economy proposal currently under revision. The new proposal is promised to better address the full product lifecycle while taking into account the situation in all Member States in order to improve the implementation on the ground. Besides several issues, the concept also covers sustainable buildings and topics relevant to the construction sector.
The stakeholders’ contributions are expected to help the Commission to prepare its new action plan in the field of resource efficiency, including resource efficiency in the construction sector. Contrary to its previous draft published last year, the new initiative will go beyond waste management and will look into all the related aspects. Since dedicated consultations on the review of EU waste targets already took place earlier in 2013, the current process rather focuses on the additional related topics and untapped aspects of the already discussed issues, with special focus on the design phase. This is expected to turn the proposal more holistic.
Based on the defined needs by the industry and organisations, the final framework document may cover areas of interest for the building and constructions sector like sustainable buildings, smart use of raw materials, extraction for secondary raw materials, (eco)labelling, water use, specific sectorial measures, etc. The action plan will contain measures for the whole value chain.
The defined actions are expected to have clear EU added value and to be fully compatible with the Commission’s jobs and growth agenda. This way the decision makers hope for “closing the loop” of the circular economy and strengthening its earlier published concept by the end of the year with concrete actions to follow.
Should you consider to take part in the EU public consultation running until 20 August 2015, for more information please see here.
Similarly to the written consultation, the Commission is also organising a Circular Economy conference on 25 June 2015 in Brussels, which also forms part of the process. For more information on the event please see here.
