Belgium: Cembureau, the European cement association, believes that the European Commission's proposed headline resource efficiency target fails to capture real resource efficiency improvements by adopting the weight-based Raw Material Consumption (RMC) as a proxy.

While the cement industry is raw-material intensive by mass, it is also one of the biggest contributors to the circular economy. Cembureau believes that in order to enhance resource efficiency in the cement industry, the following factors should be ensured:

• When applying the waste hierarchy (prevention, re-use, recycling, recovery, disposal), options that deliver the best overall environmental, social and economic outcomes should be encouraged and assessed at the local level;
• Efficient use of resources throughout the value chain spanning from extraction, manufacturing, construction, use, to end-of-life stages;
• Use of resources in such a way that has the lowest environmental, social and economic burdens over the long term;
• Use of resources appropriate to the reserves available, i.e. scarcity/abundance are critical factors, which mean sustainability needs to be approached in different ways for different resources.