FEAD reacts to the Clean Industrial Deal
Brussels, 26 February 2025 – FEAD, the European Waste Management Association, welcomes the publication of the European Commission’s Clean Industrial Deal, particularly its ambition to position the EU as a world leader in the circular economy by 2030. The Commission rightly acknowledges that circularity is key to maximising Europe’s limited resources, reducing dependencies, enhancing resilience, and creating a more competitive, low-carbon industrial model.
However, to truly make circularity a priority, waste management and recycling must be made more competitive compared to virgin materials. This requires a set of strong measures to ensure that recyclates are the preferred choice in the EU market.
- Boosting the demand for recyclates
FEAD strongly supports mandatory green public procurement and horizontal recycled content targets to drive demand for recycled materials. These targets must not be diluted by including pre-consumer waste or bio-based materials, as the latter often come from virgin sources and do not contribute to true circularity.
- Avoiding market restrictions and export taxes on waste
Circularity must not be limited by artificial restrictions such as closed-loop recycling requirements or taxes on waste exports. Instead of export fees, the EU should incentivise keeping valuable materials within Europe through positive economic measures, ensuring that recyclates remain within the European market in a competitive way.
- Reducing energy costs for recycling industries
The Clean Industrial Deal provides much-needed energy relief for energy-intensive industries and the clean-tech sector, but recycling industries must also benefit from lower energy costs. Many recycling processes, such as plastic recycling, require high energy inputs. Supporting them will enhance the sector’s competitiveness and consequently reduce dependency on virgin raw materials.
FEAD welcomes the Industrial Decarbonisation Accelerator Act, which aims to boost demand for EU-made clean products through sustainability, resilience, and ‘Made in Europe’ criteria in public and private procurement. However, this approach must also apply to recycled materials.
European-produced recyclates should be prioritised over virgin materials and uncertified recyclates from third countries. The EU has set strong regulatory frameworks to ensure quality and environmental standards for recycled materials, and these efforts must not be undermined by the influx of cheaper, non-compliant materials from outside Europe.
FEAD President, Claudia Mensi, stated: ‘We strongly supports the Clean Industrial Deal’s recognition of circularity as a key pillar of European competitiveness and sustainability. However, ensuring a truly level playing field between recycled and virgin materials will require strong policy measures to create a competitive recycling sector, incentivise demand, and support industry needs such as energy cost reduction. FEAD remains committed to working with the European Commission in view of the Clean Industrial Dialogue on Circularity to make the circular economy a reality.’
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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 320,000 local jobs, fuelling €5 billion of investments into the economy every year. For more information, please contact: info@fead.be