EU budget allocations for municipal waste management are “insufficient” to support central and eastern European (CEE) member states (MS) in catching up with the EU’s decarbonization targets, reveals a new report published by Zero Waste Europe and conducted by CEE partner organizations. “Despite increased EU funding, many CEE MS face structural and systemic challenges in biowaste management. A major issue is the lack of adequate infrastructure for separate collection, composting, and anaerobic digestion. Much of the funding has historically been allocated to residual waste treatment infrastructure, especially incineration, rather than high-priority circular economy initiatives,” Janek Vähk, Zero Pollution policy manager at Zero Waste Europe, tells Packaging Insights.
