Introduction
Waste generation constitutes the key by-product of the modern economic and social lifestyle and consumption patterns and one of the main -constantly aggravating- problems for the environment and human health, despite all attempts to control it 
. More specifically, in 2014, 2598 million tons of waste were generated by all economic activities and households in the 28 EU Member States, equating to more than 5118 kg per EU inhabitant . Apart from the environmental and health impacts, waste is directly related to economic loss, as it is estimated that materials sent to landfill in the EU could have a commercial value of around 5.25 billion euros per annum . In addition to this, what should be considered is the cost of infrastructure required for the collection, sorting and management of waste as well as the resource crisis due to the over-exploitation of natural resources caused by population growth, urbanization, unsustainable economic activities and consumption patterns.
To address the pressing challenges in this field, the EU decided to transform its linear economy (take-make-dispose) into a Circular Economy (CE) aspiring to decouple economic growth and well-being from ever-increasing waste generation, strengthen environmentally sound waste management, enhance eco-design, achieve higher recycling rates and reduction of waste, stimulate competitiveness and resource-efficiency as well as create new jobs and opportunities for new businesses, innovations and investments by keeping the added value in products for as long as possible in the market. The CE policy pointed out in a holistic way the interrelation among resource, substance, product and waste highlighting the interface among waste, product and chemical legislations taking into consideration that waste –other than pollution- can be conceived and used as the virgin material in the production process. Namely, the life-cycling thinking incorporated in the CE concept stresses the need to take into account the environmental impacts of the entire material lifecycle in an integrated way.
The fact that the CE put the spotlight on the life-cycle perspective constitutes a clear sign towards the building of interlinkages among legally binding product standards, resource and waste law and policy, and legislation on chemicals, given that the decisions made in the period when a product is conceptualized and manufactured by industry (design stage) are extremely important for all the stages of its lifetime. In the field of waste law and policy, the main concerns revolve around the obstacles and challenges related to the “environmentally sound waste management”, since according to the CE Action Plan only around 40% of the waste generated by EU households is currently recycled whereas, in 2013, the total waste generation in the EU amounted to approximately 2.5 billion tons of which 1.6 billion tons were not used or recycled . The CE Package calls, in particular, for further clarification of the waste definition as well as for a better application of the waste hierarchy with emphasis on increasing recycling both in quantity and quality.