Steel is at the centre of the circular economy. Steel is a permanent material – this is to say, it can be recovered and recycled endlessly, without losing its essential properties.
Steel production, use and recycling naturally follows a circular pattern, with steel products returning to the cycle once their service life has ended.
The large volumes of steel produced in Europe every year – 160 million tonnes – are made with large amounts of scrap steel. 56% of EU steel is made from scrap, with around 100 million tonnes of scrap steel recycled every year.
In 2020, the EU published a Circular Economy Action Plan. This Action Plan is an important step in developing a truly circular economy in Europe.
Joint press release by WindEurope and Eurofer
Brussels, 17 January 2023 – The revision of the Waste Shipment Regulation adopted by the European Parliament in today’s plenary vote is a welcome step towards a more sustainable approach in waste exports to third countries. Still, it remains urgent to close some critical loopholes to avoid circumvention of the new measures and ensure watertight environmental and social standards equivalent to those of the EU, urges the European Steel Association (EUROFER).
Brussels, 01 December 2022 - The changes brought to the Waste Shipment Regulation are a welcome step in the right direction to ensure that environmental and social standards equivalent to the EU’s are met when waste is exported to third countries. However, significant issues remain largely unaddressed with room for further improvement, in particular by strengthening monitoring for OECD countries and by pre-empting circumvention which risks to weaken the effectiveness of the new measures, says the European Steel Association (EUROFER) following the vote of the Environment Committee (ENVI) at the European Parliament.