Yes to an EU Legislation on Sustainable Resource Management

RREUSE has joined forces with over 100 organisations to demand an EU legislation  on Sustainable Resource Management. This collective endorsement reflects a shared vision and commitment to address the fundamental challenges at the root of the global crisis and to promote an EU that can thrive within the limits of our planet’s resources.

Resource extraction and processing are the catalysts behind the most pressing challenges of our time, including global warming, biodiversity loss, water stress, pollution, and social injustices. We cannot address these challenges unless the EU, a major consumer using between 70% and 97% of the ‘safe operating space’ available for the whole world in terms of impacts from resource use, aligns with planetary boundaries and reduces its outsized impact on the environment and people. While the EU has introduced new measures and targets on climate and biodiversity, there is a crucial gap in current European legislation on resource consumption, underscoring the need for a new law with science-based and binding resource reduction targets.

We are calling for an EU Directive that will set binding EU material footprint reduction targets to 5 tonnes per capita by 2050 in line with the best available research on sustainable consumption levels, with incremental targets to monitor and ensure progress.