European authorities are increasingly considering wood as a cornerstone for developing sustainable business policies

As part of her update on the Circular Economy Package and the revision of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive 94/62/EC, which has been underway since mid-October, Muller said: “What better example of circularity. This is the sector where we have the most striking example of what a circular economy means.”

The concept of circularity is now a priority in Europe, she said, and is becoming increasingly important, meaning that rather than being mutually exclusive areas, environmental protection and economic growth are now interlinked with one another.

In questions after her presentation, former EPV President Peter Rikken said the EU needed to go further in its support for wood, which he said was the only truly renewable and sustainable material. “I don’t understand why wood is still in the same summing up as the other materials – glass, metals and plastics - which are synthetic and made with huge amounts of energy,” he said.

He added that in a recent Dutch raw materials lifecycle analysis, the worst performing wood products performed better than the best performing plastic products. “Wood is the only material that grows from the earth. It’s the only material that absorbs CO2 from the environment,” he said