Recently Portugal has revised its Municipal Solid Waste Strategic Plan (PERSU 2020+) with the objective of reframing its waste management framework until 2025, since the country was granted an exemption by the European Commission on their targets for 2020. PERSU 2020+ sets the stage for the future implementation of waste directives nationally. It reflects amendments in 2018 to the EU Waste Framework Directive, which outlined targets of a 65% recycling rate and landfilling of no more than 10% by 2035 for Member States. It was clear that PERSU 2020+ did not go far enough in terms of ambition or concrete policy requirements. For example, in Portugal it has taken more than 20 years to reach a 22% recycling rate of municipal solid waste. To achieve the EU’s 2025 and 2030 recycling and waste prevention targets would require almost tripling the speed of change that has been shown in the past. Therefore, it was obvious to us that Portugal needed to change its strategy to have a much stronger focus on separate collection (door-to-door), specifically including bio-waste collection and higher levels of investment in recycling capabilities. when the new waste management plan was originally published it lacked sufficient detail and ambition that was needed to both meaningfully change our consumption and production patterns in Portugal, and to meet the required recycling targets set by the EU. For example, although Portugal already incinerates more than 20% of its urban waste, of the €500 million investment outlined in the national plan, 40% was set aside for increasing the capacity for burning waste, around 500 thousand tons/year, a policy that is incompatible with a circular economy or the EU’s own definition of what a sustainable economic activity is. To counteract this, ZERO began implementing several initiatives across Portugal, that when combined with some complementary political changes, provided the right context for us to successfully push for amending the national waste management plan which included
 Presenting data to decision makers to prove that building more incineration capacity within Portugal would make it impossible for the country to reach the EU-required 65% recycling target by 2035.
 Showcasing evidence explaining that increasing the national incineration capacity was in direct contradiction with the approved Roadmap for Carbon Neutrality in 2050, where there was no increase in incineration capacity foreseen, during a meeting with the Ministry for Environment regarding the new waste plan.