The draft Waste and Contaminated Land Bill represents one of the more significant updates to Spain's waste framework in recent years, transposing EU directives into national law and setting new targets across several waste streams.

Main changes

Among the headline changes are stricter targets for separate collection, extended producer responsibility obligations, and new requirements aimed at reducing the volume of waste sent to landfill – pushing the system as a whole further towards prevention, reuse and recycling.

Textile sector

The textile sector faces new obligations around separate collection of used clothing and textiles, anticipating the EU-wide requirement for mandatory separate textile collection – a change that will require new sorting infrastructure capable of handling the varied composition of textile waste.

Waste WEEE

For Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), the law reinforces collection and treatment obligations, recognising that electronic waste contains both valuable recoverable materials and hazardous components that need to be managed correctly.

Demolition/construction sector

Construction and demolition waste, one of the largest waste streams by volume, gets new requirements around selective demolition and the recovery of materials like concrete, wood, metal and aggregates – aiming to keep more of this material in circulation rather than in landfill.

Looking towards the future

Taken together, these changes signal a direction rather than a single fix – each sector affected will need sorting and recovery capacity that matches the new targets, which is where technologies like PICVISA's optical sorting and robotics solutions become part of the response.

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