A measure was passed in the European Union to set recycling targets for 2020 in order to reduce the amount of waste that is incinerated and landfilled. Pete Harrison of Reuters reports:

The European Parliament voted for the goal of recycling or re-using half of the main types of EU household waste by 2020 and 70 percent of all waste from building and demolition.

Over 1.8 billion tonnes of waste are generated each year in Europe, equating to 3.5 tonnes per person, of which less than a third is recycled.

A section of the agreement lays out a waste reduction measure hierarchy that starts with the three R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The fourth tier would be to try to extract energy from waste. The final measure would be landfilling if all other options were exhausted.

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