Politically, there is a lot of catching up to do, not only with the energy transition, but also with the topic of circular economy. Climate protection and CO avoidance need a breath of fresh air. But he’s not from Berlin at the moment, but from little Dessau.
Largely unnoticed, the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) published a position paper at the beginning of November that has it all. In the 25-page paper, the UBA meticulously lists where the federal government still has a lot of catching up to do in terms of recycling and the circular economy. The UBA paper is dated November 3rd and was deliberately published before the European Waste Prevention Week (EWAV) – the UBA is a co-initiator of the EWAV.
The basic tenor of the paper: recycling alone can only reduce the waste of resources to a limited extent. Waste separation is good, but only helps to a limited extent. Politicians must therefore start much earlier in the product value chain than with the waste bin. Waste avoidance, repair and sustainable product design, along with many other suggestions for recycling, take up a lot of space.
The office from Dessau sees a lot of catching up to do with its Berlin supervisory authority, the Federal Ministry for the Environment. The paper contains “a whole series of concrete recommendations to promote a circular economy along the entire value chain”.
Here are some of the important and correct proposals from the UBA for its Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) and the traffic light coalition:
Much of this can already be found in bullet points in the traffic light coalition agreement, which advocates “closed material cycles” in the chapter on environmental protection. To date, however, no one has waited in vain for corresponding draft laws or initiatives in the direction of Brussels.
“Dare to make more progress” is the title of the coalition agreement, which was signed on December 7, 2021, almost exactly a year ago. But the coalition doesn’t really dare to do it yet. It is astonishing that after a year of traffic light government, a federal office of all people has to tell the government where to go.
