“We are facing a challenge, and we need to move from debating groups to working groups. I am afraid that the time is too short – as we proposed in the national plan – to reach measures that are visible in the circular economy.

We must be prepared for a sprint to achieve the performances we proposed. Our national plan is extremely ambitious and covers almost all fields of activity in Romania, and I believe that it can only be realized in practice with the harmonization of enormous collective work. We see how many workgroups there are and how many topics are in each workgroup,” Constantin Damov, president of Green Group said during Circular Economy Conference organized by Sustainability Today and The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“We want to take steps towards the circular economy. We know what level Romania is starting from. We have a degree of 1.4 percent circularity and 13 percent in recycling. They are two very different indicators.

Circularity is different than recycling, so we also have two different results. To raise circularity to higher levels, think about how difficult it has been with recycling and how far we are from what we set out to do.

Personally, I wish we had an exponential increase in what circularity receives. Personally, I think it will be a little slower.

With so many working groups, nothing should be left behind. But I think we should deal especially with the areas that are not legislated today. And I am referring here to the textile area, to the construction waste area. There are enormous amounts that go into a storage cycle and there is a lot, a lot to do. I would also add the bio-waste part. Municipal waste has more than 50% biodegradable content.

I think these are the big challenges that we could tackle with success right away.

Representing the Coalition for the Circular Economy, I would say that it is an effort organization, and an expert organization, which is constantly growing, and which has proposed to stay close to the central authorities, and even the local ones, to succeed in taking steps, and integrate where our expertise can be volunteered and be able to speed things up.

Acceleration is the word that must define our circularity efforts. I believe that Romania’s ambitions must be coordinated with European ones. I want us to become much more active on the European level to be able to understand and convey our needs, but also to speed things up in our country.

Romania can no longer remain at the bottom of the European ranking, and I think we have a chance to advance many places in terms of the circularity rate.”