Reuse at the heart of Single Use Plastic Bans

With single use plastics continue to grab headlines, it would have been easy to miss new measures that were quietly introduced to support wider reuse and recycling, going to the very heart of the Circular Economy concept.

The idea of reuse is to go beyond a single use for everything we own, extending the life of that item through passing it on, lending it, repairing it, upcycling it, or repurposing it. The Community Reuse Network (CRN) estimates that we currently reuse less than 5% of our municipal waste in Ireland.

The revised Waste Framework Directive text, approved here last week by the Council of EU Member States, introduced measures that will go well beyond a ban on a specific plastic items, by bringing in obligations to measure and eventually set targets for all types of reuse. For further information please see our press release here and the RREUSE network reaction here.

• June 12, 2018