The European Commission released details of a new energy-saving strategy for the EU institutions that includes a requirement to recycle all policy proposals and produce more waste which can then be re-used.
“Weaning the EU off of imported Russian energy has become our main focus this week,” said a European Commissioner who asked not to be identified because printing their name on a big digital screen would use too much energy. “The EU institutions produce a lot of waste, and we need to get better not just at using it, but at using it again and again and again.”
The Commission’s strategy would require EU officials to:
· Recycle policy proposals: Part of the EU’s ‘Circular Economy Strategy’, this requirement promotes optimizing synergies and leveraging best-practices when it comes to using meaningless phrases and concepts as often as possible.
· Burn non-papers as biomass: As they are non-papers, they produce no carbon emissions. Or results.
· Add two more European Parliament HQs: The proposal to reduce EP trips to Strasbourg by 50% was misunderstood and now the assembly has created two other seats – one in Cork, the other in Split – so that the EP spends only 25% of its time in each of them.
· Capture Commission Press Room hot-air emissions: Measuring the actual CO2 emissions from midday press briefings has proved difficult as scientists have not been able to connect to WiFi to report their findings.
· Charge EU institutions a levy on GIFs: A recent audit found that the energy needed to power European Commission social media animations and videos is equivalent to the output of six nuclear reactors, yet no one has ever seen one.
· Reduce number of lecterns per press conference: EU proposals must now be introduced by no more than three officials plus one spokesperson to reduce the carbon footprint of moving a bunch of lecterns around.
· Leave red tape: Turns out that slashing it takes up too much energy.
· Recycle policy proposals: Part of the EU’s ‘Circular Economy Strategy’, this requirement promotes optimizing synergies and leveraging best-practices when it comes to using meaningless phrases and concepts as often as possible. This time, in a more holistic way.