Definition of what is meant by cascading use of resources

15.4.2015

Question for written answer E-005977-15
to the Commission
Rule 130
Elisabetta Gardini (PPE)

We are constantly losing economically valuable materials. Growing demand for, and competing pressures on, finite and sometimes scarce resources are increasingly undermining and weakening our quality of life in environmental and economic terms.

A more intelligent use of resources should therefore be seen as not only an environmental imperative but also a real opportunity to reap economic benefits.

For this reason, increasing reference is being made at European level to the cascading use of resources without any clear legal definition of what this means, the European Parliament itself having mentioned it in its own-initiative report of 2 July 2013 (2012/2295(INI)).

Today, each country and each industrial sector has its own definition of ‘cascading use of resources’, which is of great importance for the effective implementation of provisions concerning the circular economy, the bioeconomy and biofuels, for example.

Given the need to clarify what is meant by ‘cascading use’, will the Commission define this principle in its new proposal on the circular economy that it has undertaken to present by the end of the year (2015)?