European climate resilience and risk management initiative

FEAD, the European Waste Management Association, welcomes the European Commission’s initiative to reinforce the EU’s climate resilience and risk management framework. With members operating across the entire waste value chain, we represent a sector that is both critical to continuity of essential services and instrumental in ensuring environmental safety in case of extreme weather events.

Recent climate-induced disasters, including the Ahr flood in 2021 and the Valencia flood in 2024, underscore the urgent need to fully integrate disaster waste management into resilience planning and funding instruments. These events exposed structural weaknesses in local and regional preparedness and highlighted how waste management continues to be overlooked, both in practice and policy.

1. Waste management: a missing pillar of climate resilience

Despite the sector’s central role in managing part of the consequences of climate-induced disasters, waste and resource management remains underrepresented in national and EU-level adaptation and civil protection frameworks.

• Following 2024 Valencia flood, disaster waste was entirely absent from the 100 urgent actions issued by the city council, despite massive volumes of mixed, hazardous, and organic waste generated by the event[1]. Moreover, the Fekete et al. (2025)[2] study documents that over 800,000 tonnes of disaster waste were generated (nearly double the annual waste volume in the metropolitan area of Valencia) overwhelming treatment capacity and logistics systems.
• In both Valencia and the Ahr region, waste professionals were not systematically included in emergency command centres, contributing to uncoordinated responses, health risks, and delayed recovery.

These cases show that waste management must be formally recognised as critical infrastructure in disaster risk reduction.

The sector faces multiple interlocking barriers that prevent its full contribution to resilience:

• Lack of inclusion in emergency planning: Waste experts are often not part of operational crisis teams, and disaster waste management is absent from many national disaster response protocols.
• Legal fragmentation: In the case of Valencia, over 95 different national, regional, and local regulations applied to disaster waste during the crisis, creating delays and confusion.
• Infrastructure vulnerability: Waste treatment and sorting facilities could also be affected by climate-induced disaster, putting the response at risk.
• Reactive, not preventive, response: Without advance disaster waste management plans, decisions are taken ad hoc under pressure, bypassing sustainability and safety considerations.
• Funding uncertainty: While solidarity mechanisms exist, no specific budget lines are earmarked for waste operations, despite their essential role.

2. Recommendations for policy integration

FEAD supports the Commission’s intention to consider legislative and non-legislative options and urges the following actions to be prioritised:

• Mandatory inclusion of disaster waste management in climate adaptation strategies and emergency response frameworks.
• Development of EU-level guidelines and action protocols for disaster waste management, covering collection, temporary storage, transport, treatment, and final disposal.
• Dedicated financial support within the EU Solidarity Fund and other relevant instruments for upgrading waste infrastructure and equipment to climate-resilient standards.
• Enhance data sharing and cooperation: Improve information on waste types and quantities generated during crises and cooperation between Member States, waste operators, and EU institutions to optimize response strategies.
• Create a specific EU waste catalogue code for flood waste, to facilitate traceability, reporting, and regulatory alignment.
• Train public authorities’ staff and operators in emergency waste procedures and encourage simulation exercises involving waste experts and civil protection teams.

Climate induced events are not a local issue. Storms, floods, fires, and their resulting waste streams are transboundary. Europe must be ready with coordinated, interoperable systems and plans, that could facilitate the movement and treatment of disaster-related waste across Member States.

3. The role of Circular Economy

A circular approach must not be abandoned during crises. Past experiences show that during crisis the pressure to remove waste quickly often overcome sorting and recycling practices. The waste sector has the capacity to recover and revalorise materials, even under pressure and can offer innovative solutions, such as mobile recovery units, AI-driven sorting, and adaptive logistics for emergency scenarios.

This underscores the need for:

• Pre-disaster planning for resource recovery even under emergency conditions.
• Incentives and guidance for preserving circular economy principles during response and recovery phases.
• Standardised protocols that balance urgency with sustainability.

Conclusion

FEAD calls on the European Commission to fully integrate disaster waste management and circular economy expertise into the forthcoming resilience framework. The initiative presents a vital opportunity to address long-neglected structural gaps and strengthen Europe’s ability to recover faster, cleaner, and more safely from climate-related disasters.

Importantly, the active engagement of waste management companies, many of them SMEs, directly supports one of the stated objectives of this initiative: to promote innovation and open new markets for climate resilience tools and services. These companies bring forward expertise, technical capacity, and readiness to innovate in recovery logistics, material treatment, digital tools, and safe disposal methods, all essential to building a more resilient Europe.

[1] https://thinking-circular.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/2.Artacho_Analysis-of-the-risks-faced-by-DWM.pdf

[2] Fekete, Alexander & Estrany, Joan & Artacho-Ramírez, Miguel. (2025). Cascading impact chains and recovery challenges of the 2024 Valencia catastrophic floods. Discover Sustainability. 6. 10.1007/s43621-025-01483-4. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/393231598_Cascading_impact_chains_and_recovery_challenges_of_the_2024_Valencia_catastrophic_floods

FEAD is the European Waste Management Association, representing the private waste and resource management industry across Europe, including 20 national waste management federations and 3,000 waste management companies. Private waste management companies operate in 60% of municipal waste markets in Europe and in 75% of industrial and commercial waste. This means more than 500,000 local jobs, fuelling €5 billion of investments into the economy every year. https://fead.be