Twelve EU regions have announced that they are to join forces to develop a common framework in a bid to improve the consistency of recycling and recovery rates across Europe.

The partnership project: ‘Regions 4 Recycling’ (R4R) will run over three years and will formulate a methodology for waste data observation, selective collection and recycling rates that will enable participating regions to share best practice to improve their recycling performance.

The development follows a European Commission report released in April 2012, which highlighted vast differences in recycling rates between EU member states, ranging from less than 10% to more than 70%.

The initiative, which has a budget of €2.2 million, is being led by the Ile-de-France Region Waste Management Observatory (ORDIF) with ACR+ managing overall project communication and the Public Waste Agency of Flanders, OVAM, overseeing the technical component.