Segregations in Sustainability-Oriented Policy Framework as Circular Economy Stumbling Stones: Waste Recovery Suitability Analysis and Critical Review of the EU Legislation

The EU wants to tackle the single problem of unsustainable economy, but the legislation overview showed segmentation where energy and material import dependencies are separately addressed which leads to legislative gaps. Waste management represents the only area that connects these two approaches and suffers from this segregation the most. The waste problem is to be solved through material recovery alone, but not all waste can be recycled. This is shown through recovery suitability analysis of rejects from waste separation system where it is shown that a significant part of recyclable fractions is rejected and resulting residual material is suitable for thermochemical recovery. Thus, material and energy recovery are compatible. At the same time, recovery technologies are classified strictly on material and energy recovery ones, and technologies in between which have multiple types of products are forcefully classified in one of these categories. Thus, anaerobic digestion is considered as recycling due to the coproduction of biogas with digestate, while pyrolysis and gasification are classified as “alternative technologies for thermal waste treatment” even though their products are used in the production of different products. All of these identified legislative gaps and artificial segregation need to be addressed if reaching circular economy is goal.