A report in the Guardian newspaper says the European Commission is warning that wasting valuable natural resources could lead to scarcity, price rises and increase the threat of recession in the European Union. The EU Environment Commissioner is also calling for the EU to eliminate environmentally-harmful subsidies – including water pricing schemes which do not recover fully water use costs.

According to the Guardian, European Union Commissoner for the Environment Janez Potočnik has linked the current eurozone crisis to potential future crises driven by price increases in key resources. Failure by consumers and businesses to use resources more efficiently – from energy, water and waste to raw materials would drive up costs and further reduce Europe's standard of living.

The Guardian described Janez Potočnik as giving notice that his department was “scouring through existing regulations and proposed new ones in order to ensure that none would encourage resources to be used profligately, and to safeguard the EU's natural resources for the future. Some European regulations will have to be altered in order to ensure the efficient use of energy, water and raw materials.”

He also referred to his own education as an economist where he was taught that “water was a free commodity, like air” and called for such costs to be internalised.

In a speech to the UK Parliament shortly before Christmas, Janez Potočnik said:

“Resource efficiency is not a choice, it is inevitable. Our choice is whether to develop it now, or whether we wait until we are forced to when critical resources are exhausted and expensive.”

Referring to the “great acceleration” during the 20th century when world population grew four times, economic output 40 times, fossil fuel use 16  fold and water use 9  fold,  Mr. Potočnik expressed concern that the world might “hit the wall soon” and that “business as usual" is not an option.

The "business as usual" scenario would need three times more resources by 2050 but already 60 % of the world’s major ecosystems on which these resources depend are degraded or are used unsustainably. Material costs already make up more than 40 % of total costs in manufacturing industries compared to less than 20 % for labour.

Mr. Potočnik said:

“Europe's position in a resource-constrained world does not look so good: we are poor in mineral resources. Today, the European Union imports six times more materials and resources than it exports. We get 48 % of our copper ore from abroad, 64 % of zinc and bauxite and 78 % of nickel. – and for some critical raw materials which are expected to become difficult to access, we are completely dependent on non-European sources.

“We import all of our cobalt, platinum, titanium and vanadium, as well as rare earth metals. But the Commission definition of resources is much broader: it includes, for instance, clean water or biodiversity and the ecosystem services that it provides. And the problem is wider than the one of scarcities – we need to address the loss of natural capital that underpins our economic activity.”

Mr. Potočnik is calling for the EU  to eliminate environmentally-harmful subsidies – including water pricing schemes which do not recover fully the water use costs - and then to prepare plans and timetables to phase them out.

He also said that at Member States level there is an increasingly acknowledged need to shift from taxation of labour towards environmental taxation, which is seen as more growth-friendly. If such a shift happened and environmental taxes increased from their current average level across Europe of around 6.3 % to around 10 % of all taxes, this would bring additional tax revenue equivalent to around 1.4 % of EU GDP.

He went on to praise the UK ‘s Waste and Resource Action Programme (WRAP) which since 2010 has served as the single point of contact for businesses and organisations which want to improve their resource efficiency, pulling together seven separate resource efficiency programs. Mr. Potočnik described WRAP as an example of a good practice to all Member States and the UK as “way ahead of other European countries.in Industrial Symbiosis.”