April 14, 2026
FEAD position on the review of the EU taxonomy climate and environment delegated acts
Urban waste water treatment
Reference: activity 2.2 in environment DA, Annex I and activity 5.3 in climate delegated acts
| Requirement | FEAD comments and recommendations |
| The activity requires that sewage sludgeis used in accordance with Council Directive 86/278/EEC or as required by national law relating to the spreading of sludge on the soil or any other application of sludge on and in the soil. | The text should support a balanced approach that does not exclude the different sludge valorisation routes — agricultural use, material recovery and energy recovery — and that allows for sufficient flexibility depending on sludge quality, local conditions and available industrial outlets. |
Manufacture of plastic packaging goods
Reference: activity 1.1 in environment DA, Annex II
| Requirement | FEAD comments and recommendations |
| In the revised version, recycled content objectives have been lowered and postponed for 2040. | The revised targets reduce the predictability necessary for investments in recycling capacity and gives a fatal signal for recycling companies at risk of bankruptcy due to the current plastic recycling crisis. From the perspective of operators and recyclers, a gradual trajectory with intermediate milestones before 2040 is more necessary, coherent and feasible than an abrupt increase after 2040. We request that the intermediate milestone from the previous version be maintained and that the timeline be aligned with the PPWR 2030 objectives, establishing targets that surpass those set in mandatory legislation, ensuring further progress in the sector. In fact, the fundamental problem of the proposed revision is the complete absence of any market signal in the 2026–2040 window. This is precisely the period in which our members are making investment decisions in recycling capacity. Without a predictable and credible demand for recycled materials, these investments cannot be justified to financiers – nor will lending institutions consider them sufficiently bankable. Moreover, the European plastics recycling industry is struggling with shrinking capacity and unfair competition from abroad. As low oil prices and excess production capacity in non-EU markets stifle growth, Europe’s recycling sector has hit a standstill. This downturn has left much of the existing capacity unused, pushing many recycling businesses to the brink of financial collapse. This is compounded by an evident contradiction with the PPWR (Regulation (EU) 2025/40), which establishes mandatory recycled content obligations from 2030 onwards. The Taxonomy should not send a weaker market signal than the trajectory already set by EU legislation – including PPWR. The current proposal reverses this logic and sends very wrong signals in a moment of severe crisis. |
| In the revised version, the possibility to use biomass feedstock as an alternative to recycled content has been extended to virgin biomass feedstock, while it was previously limited to biowaste. | FEAD strongly insists on removing this alternative altogether from the delegated act. From a circular economy perspective, this extension is difficult to justify: virgin biomass does not valorise waste, does not stimulate separate collection and does not create demand for the sorting and recycling capacity of our members. It is, in essence, an option that allows packaging producers to declare themselves sustainable without contributing to circularity – and which, in practice, represents a distortion of competition to the detriment of recycled materials. More generally, the biobased alternative to recycled content in packaging does not reflect the experiences of the waste management sector with biobased feedstock and bioplastics in particular. Bioplastics are not suitable for existing recycling plants but also do not decompose at the same time as biowaste. |
Phosphorus recovery from waste water
Reference: activity 2.1 in environment DA, Annex II
| Requirement | FEAD comments and recommendations |
| Technology requirements for the recovery process | The activity should remain technology neutral to enable research and development efforts. For example, R&D is being carried out to recover phosphate from wastewater via vivianite (ferrous phosphate). |
| The activity still excludes the previous steps to the phosphorus recovery | The current scope of the EU Taxonomy constitutes a direct barrier to the creation of a European phosphorus recovery chain. While wastewater treatment activity is already considered within the Taxonomy, other activities, such as incineration are not. Activity 2.1 should therefore not exclude the construction and operation of mono-incinerators as they are set up for the direct purpose of recovering phosphorous and are considered by the JRC the most effective way to do it (through sewage sludge ashes after mono-incineration). |
Collection and transport of non-hazardous and hazardous waste
Reference: activity 2.3 in environment DA, Annex II
| Requirement | FEAD comments and recommendations |
| The activity is limited to the collection of waste aimed at preparing for re-use or recycling. | Residual waste collection is an essential service, crucial for public health and environmental protection and should be considered Taxonomy aligned. |
| The TSC refer in point 3 (substantial contribution) to the activity as being carried out within or outside ‘publicly organised waste management systems’ (both options are foreseen with different criteria). | This concept of ‘publicly organised waste management’ requires urgent clarification that ensures there is no discrimination between public and private waste management entities when carrying out the collection of municipal waste. |
Treatment of hazardous waste
Reference: activity 2.4 in environment DA, Annex II
| Requirement | FEAD comments and recommendations |
| This activity (treatment of hazardous waste) is excluding the recovery of materials from Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), End-of-Life Vehicles (ELV), inorganic materials from incineration processes, such as ashes, slags or dust. | The recovery of materials from those streams is not sufficiently covered by activities 2.6 (depollution and dismantling) nor 2.7 (recovery of non-hazardous waste) and it should be in the taxonomy. The proposed revision includes now a new activity for battery recycling, but the other waste flows require equal coverage (e.g., WEEE, ELV). |
Recovery of bio-waste by anaerobic digestion or composting
Reference: activity 2.5 in environment DA, Annex II
| Requirement | FEAD comments and recommendations |
| For anaerobic digestion plants, it is required that source segregated bio-waste collected separately, including municipal bio-waste and comparable source segregated bio-waste from non-municipal sources, constitutes at least 50% of the input material to be digested. | FEAD strongly welcomes the extension of the scope beyond municipal waste, which reflect operational realities. However, the input requirement is still not realistic as the revised text has now specified that the input refers to the material to be digested. This means that 50% of the whole input must actually be fed into the fermenter, which is practically impossible to achieve. Depending on the kind of organic input material and its material specifications the amounts of material being digested can vary widely. We therefore suggest the following amendments to set the reference at the input to the plant, which also aligns with the requirement set for co-digestion. In |
| Output requirements of the activity (The activity produces one or more of the following…) | The revision still does not recognise the positive impacts the application of the digestate (after composting) as a peat-replacement in gardening and potting soil, which also has circularity benefits. FEAD considers that the output requirements must be extended to consider the proportional substitution of peat with suitable compost as component in growing media and potting soils. |
Sorting and material recovery of non-hazardous waste
Reference: activity 2.7 in environment DA, Annex II
| Requirement | FEAD comments and recommendations |
| This revision clarifies that for non-hazardous waste batteries, the material recovery rates are set out in Annex XII to Regulation (EU) 2023/1542. | This clarification should be revisited as it does not seem to make sense after the reclassification of batteries waste. Recovery targets in the Batteries regulations are only set for batteries that will be reclassified as hazardous. |
| The 50% recovery rate for streams subject to separate collection. | This may not be achievable in certain cases (e.g. mixed plastics). |
| Requirement for plastics recycling facilities to install filtration prior to wash-water discharge capable of removing at least 75% of microplastics >5 µm. | This is a relevant new operational compliance point and would benefit from clearer guidance on implementation, monitoring and verification as harmonised European standards for measuring the efficiency of such filters do not yet exist. |
| Additional proposal | The scope of activity 2.7 should be extended to cover the recovery of components used for pollution abatement from non-hazardous waste, e.g., activated carbon (as already the case for hazardous waste). This is not in scope today as it is not a mechanical treatment but a thermal treatment with steam to drive the pollutants off and recover the pores for new adsorption. |
Construction of new buildings
Reference: activity 3.1 in environment DA, Annex II
| Requirement | FEAD comments and recommendations |
| This threshold for primary gypsum has been increased. | FEAD would like to clarify that if the use of alternative resources has been lowered, it exclusively addressing post-consumer recycled gypsum. Otherwise, there is no steering effect with this revised target considering current practices. |
Repair, refurbishment, maintenance, remanufacturing; Preparation for re-use of end-of-life products and product components; Sale of second-hand goods
Reference: activities 5.1, 5.3 and 5.4 in environment DA, Annex II
| Requirement | FEAD comments and recommendations |
| The substantial contribution requires that the waste management plans ensure reuse or recycling, or, only where reuse and recycling is not viable, disposal. | This requirement is absolutely not in line with the waste hierarchy as it undermines other recovery options, including energy recovery. This requires urgent correction. |
Manufacture of plastics in primary form and plastic compounding activities
Reference: activity 3.17 in climate delegated acts
| Requirement | FEAD comments and recommendations |
| The requirements for chemical recycling are not harmonised as in one case it requires lower GHG emissions than plastic in primary form but not in the other case. | FEAD strongly advocates for alignment, which has been done in this revision for other activities. In both cases it must be required that it emits lower GHG emissions than plastic in primary form. |
Anaerobic digestion of biowaste; Composting of bio-waste
Reference: activities 5.7 and 5.8 in climate delegated acts
| Requirement | FEAD comments and recommendations |
| The definition of bio-waste refers to waste framework directive, not considering non-municipal sources. | FEAD strongly advocates for alignment with the environment delegated and extension of the scope with operational realities. FEAD believes that industrial biowaste should be considered to reach the threshold. In terms of an efficient circular economy, the goal should be to give plant operators a certain amount of leeway in choosing their material flows. |
| Output requirements | As indicated for the environment delegated act, the revised draft delegated act, still fails to recognise the positive impacts upon the use as organic fertiliser such as for substitution of peat purposes. |
| For 5.7 only: The 6th requirement in the substantial contribution, restricts a share of 10% of food and feed crops for digestion input material, | FEAD insists that the restriction of a share of 10% of food and feed crops for digestion input material is rather low and hardly achievable in practice, not least because the operators of the plants generally have no influence on the composition of the material supplied. Moreover, we question the reasoning behind using this specific threshold. Under some circumstances, it might be beneficial to use food and feed crops. Scoring the climate-friendliness of the input feedstock has already been regulated under the EU Renewable Energy Directive, so it would seem logical to adhere more closely to that regulation. |
| For 5.7 only: DNSH for PPC | FEAD does not support additional requirements for emission limit values for ammonia and greenhouse gases. The limit values are adequately covered by national emissions legislation. |
Material recovery from non-hazardous waste
Reference: activity 5.9 in climate delegated acts
| Requirement | FEAD comments and recommendations |
| Contrary to the Env DA, it is specified that the economic activity does not cover pure sorting facilities, i.e., sorting facilities where final recycling or recovery is carried out in a different facility or country. | FEAD opposes to this exclusion. It is unclear why this essential sorting step would not be equally recognised. In fact, the Waste Framework Directive does not define ‘sorting’ but determines that ‘recovery’ means any operation the principal result of which is waste serving a useful purpose by replacing other materials which would otherwise have been used to fulfil a particular function, or waste being prepared to fulfil that function, in the plant or in the wider economy. ‘Sorting’ is thus a ‘recovery’ operation and particularly also a ‘material recovery’ operation, which means any recovery operation, other than energy recovery and the reprocessing into materials that are to be used as fuels or other means to generate energy. Sorting falls under recovery operation R12 in Annex II of the Waste Framework Directive where there is no other more appropriate R code. Therefore, we conclude that there is no such thing as a ‘pure sorting facility’, which are always (material) recovery facilities and must be consequently covered under the activity ‘material recovery from non-hazardous waste’ in Section 5.9. of the EU Taxonomy Climate Delegated Act. |
| The 50% recovery rate for streams subject to separate collection. | This may not be achievable in certain cases (e.g. mixed plastics). |
| Requirement for plastics recycling facilities to install filtration prior to wash-water discharge capable of removing at least 75% of microplastics >5 µm. | This is a relevant new operational compliance point and would benefit from clearer guidance on implementation, monitoring and verification as harmonised European standards for measuring the efficiency of such filters do not yet exist. |
Landfill gas capture and utilisation
Reference: activity 5.10 in climate delegated act, Annex II
| Requirement | FEAD comments and recommendations |
| Scope of the activity | The current scope only considers landfills or landfill cells that are permanently closed. However, on sites that include both open and closed areas, the capture network is shared, meaning all captured gas contributes to climate benefits. Therefore, the scope should be expanded to include biogas recovery from both open and closed installations, as long as capture significantly improves the climate impact. Against this background, FEAD strongly recommends extending the scope to open cells as long as landfill facilities comply with EU legislation concerning biodegradable waste. Accordingly, rewording both the description and the second criterion would encourage GHG emissions mitigation at the appropriate time, while keeping European landfills on track to limit the biodegradable fraction landfilled and to meet municipal waste thresholds by 2035, as set in the Landfill Directive. |
Construction & renovation related activities; infrastructure projects
Reference: activities 6.13, 6.14, 6.15, 6.16, 6.17, 7.1 and 7.2 in climate delegated acts
| Requirement | FEAD comments and recommendations |
| Recovery targets have been increased from 70 to 85% for construction and renovation activities, but this is not done for other infrastructure projects in activities 6.13, 6.14, 6.15, 6.16, 6.17. | Ambitions should be aligned. |
Transport of CO2; Research, development and innovation for direct air capture of CO2
Reference: activities 5.11, 5.12, and 9.2 in climate delegated acts
| Requirement | FEAD comments and recommendations |
| Scope | The activities fail to acknowledge the process of carbon-capturing (of unavoidable emissions) itself as taxonomy-eligible. There should be a dedicated Taxonomy activity (or a clear alternative pathway under 5.11/5.12) for point-source CO₂ capture, including unavoidable and biogenic emissions. Eligibility should require verified transfer to compliant transport and storage, supported by robust MRV to ensure full chain integrity and measurable climate benefit. |
Recurrent comment
| Requirement | FEAD comments and recommendations |
| Reference to ‘secondary raw materials’. | Several criteria recurrently refer to the use of ‘secondary raw materials’ (e.g. DNSH for transition to circular economy in manufacturing activities, Annex I Climate Delegated Act). This term is, however, not legally defined, except for in the Packagaing and packaging waste regulation and may create confusion as to what it entails. To clarify, we suggest referring to ‘recycled materials’ instead. |
General comment
| Requirement | FEAD comments and recommendations |
| Ambition | The level of ambition seems heterogeneous, for example by not systematically including recycled content. As a minimum, the incorporation of recycled materials should be assessed as part of the DNSH for the circular economy. |
| Missing activities | FEAD reiterates the need to further complete the EU Taxonomy with additional activities, including but not limited to the following: Waste to energy. Integrated waste management systems will play a pivotal role in achieving a truly circular economy in Europe, where all waste treatment methods work in synergy. Beyond waste collection, transportation, sorting, and material recovery (including recycling), the treatment of non-hazardous non-recyclable waste, often toxin loaded, is essential to an efficient waste management system and to deliver the circular economy objective in Europe. Therefore, we strongly advocate for an explicit recognition of energy recovery from non-recyclable waste, aligned with the waste hierarchy, in the European taxonomy, as a critical tool for achieving European circular economy objectives, in particular by providing the legal clarification that a significant increase in incineration capacity should be considered in relation to the total capacity of residual waste treatment.Recovery of incineration bottom ashes. The contribution to the transition to a circular economy was already expressly acknowledged in the Environmental Delegated Act ((EU) 2023/2486, Recital 15).Pre-treatment of residual waste (TMB/MBT, stabilisation, bio-drying). Pre-treatment plants for unsorted waste play an essential role in reducing landfill disposal and optimising overall waste cycle management. These activities are not adequately represented in the current criteria, even though they contribute to the transition to more sustainable models. Therefore, we suggest to include dedicated criteria to recognise the contribution to reducing volumes, hazardousness and climate-changing emissions.Production and use of refuse-derived fuelCO₂ capture and utilisation in waste facilities. CCS/CCU technologies are not considered, even though it is the key technical step for CO2 transportation and offers potential sink functions, particularly for biogenic CO₂. It would therefore be appropriate to expand the taxonomy to include CO₂ capture technologies.Landfilling of hazardous waste |
FEAD, the European Waste Management Association, represents the entire waste management value chain, from collection and sorting to recycling, energy recovery, and final disposal. It brings together the private waste and resource management industry across Europe through its 21 national member associations and associate members, which collectively represent over 3,000 companies. Together, the sector provides more than 500,000 local jobs and fuels €5 billion in investments into the economy every year. For more information, please contact: info@fead.be