BLUEISLANDS
ACR+ new founding member of Close the Glass Loop
The Association of Cities and Regions for sustainable Resource management (ACR+) joins FEVE and the other founding members FERVER, EXPRA, UNESDA, MWE, EUROCITIES and SPIRITS EUROPE to achieve 90% of glass packaging collection for recycling by 2030.
Brussels, Belgium – ACR+ represents 1100 municipalities and 52 local and regional authorities and today joins Close the Glass Loop platform putting their extensive network at the disposal of the platform. Thanks to the cooperation of its members, ACR+ will have a key role in gathering data to build an overview of how the glass collection and sorting chain work in the Member States, cross-analysing for this national frameworks and local waste practices. This intelligence gathering work will enrich the Close the Glass Loop campaign and will encourage key stakeholders to focus more on end-of-use glass packaging management as a key sustainable resource that needs to be better exploited.
“We can work shoulder to shoulder with Close the Glass Loop as we have the same mission: making our cities circular and turning waste into sustainable resources for a more efficient EU Circular Economy. For ACR+, joining the platform is an opportunity to bring together the different players of the glass loop and more sharply define the role of local and regional bodies. This could open up new initiatives and ways of working together”, comments Françoise Bonnet, Secretary General of ACR+. “The recently announced Circular Economy Action Plan welcomes synergies between the industry and public authorities and it puts in place important resources to drive the implementation of local circular economies. I am confident we can explore together how some of them can be functional to the Close the Glass Loop objectives.”
Although household glass packaging collection is a step of a single-stream system which is relatively simpler than for other municipal waste collection systems, there are several hurdles today resulting in 24% of glass containers put on the market being lost. Municipalities are crucial partners in meeting higher objectives on glass collection & recycling through source-separated waste collection systems. In many countries, municipalities are fully responsible to operate collection, and are essential players in interacting with the citizens when they are disposing of waste. Municipalities know best the territory and the diverse cultural and social habits of citizens in terms of waste management.
“To achieve high recycling rates, we have to make sure collected glass is of good enough quality. Comments Adeline Farrelly, FEVE Secretary General, “ACR+ members’ are invaluable partners in collection and sorting infrastructures. Their support is fundamental to eliminate residual waste as much as possible and enable bottle-to-bottle recycling”, adds Adeline Farrelly.
ACR+ is a partner of the Horizon 2020 Collectors project. This research can be very functional to the work of Close the Glass Loop. The project aims to enable a better alignment between waste collection systems and the recycling value chain. It has been focusing on various activities whose results will be useful for the platform: extensive documentation of local collection system, in-depth analysis of several case studies regarding their economic balance, environmental impact and quality of sorted materials, and researches to enable better decision-making processes.
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