The European Commission will next year make initial proposals towards establishing EU-wide waste prevention targets, a senior environment directorate official announced at an ASSURRE conference in Brussels recently.

ENDS Daily reports that a policy paper on prevention targets would be published separately from three other proposals also due next year: a thematic strategy on recycling, one on sustainable resource management and a white paper on integrated product policy. nThe EU's new sixth environmental action programme devotes a large section to waste prevention, including a rare instance of quantitative, albeit non-binding, EU policy targets. These aim to reduce both the final disposal of all waste and the generation of hazardous waste by 20% to 2010 and 50% to 2050. But next year's Commission work programme makes no reference to a separate initiative on prevention targets.

Despite giving few further details of the directorate's thinking, Mr Lawrence did say that targets for hazardous waste prevention were likely to be qualitative rather than quantitative. He added that proposed EU rules requiring member states to harmonise waste statistics reporting would create a "knowledge base on which to fix targets"