**2. Legislation**

When planning the management of municipal solid waste in a particular area or region, the various actions and initiatives must be arranged hierarchically in accordance with the needs imposed by the environment. The hierarchy thus established will essentially depend on the policies of each region or state at a particular moment in time. Under Directive 2008/98/EC, European Union member states must observe the following hierarchy in waste management; it can be also used as a list of priorities for legislation and policies concerning waste prevention and management:


However, the Directive also states that when this waste hierarchy is applied, the member states shall take steps to foster the options that provide the best overall environmental outcomes. This could mean that certain waste streams have to be removed from the hierarchy when a life cycle approach to the global impacts of waste generation and management calls for it.

As far as the evolution of the legislation on packaging and packaging waste is concerned, the recovery targets in the first Directive passed on this subject (Directive 94/62/EC) were:


The following Directive (Directive 2004/12/EC) is far stricter and raised the recovery targets to be achieved in 2008, which now stand at:


The progressive changes introduced into the legislation have meant that town councils have also had to evolve in terms of the separate collection methods and programmes they use in order to adapt to the new limits established by the legislation.
