The primary objective is to reduce air, water, and soil pollution to levels no longer considered harmful to health and natural ecosystems, thereby creating a toxic-free environment within the boundaries our planet can cope with. Intermediate targets for 2030 include the EU reducing:

• health impacts (premature deaths) of air pollution by more than 55%;
• the share of people chronically disturbed by transport noise by 30%;
• EU ecosystems where air pollution threatens biodiversity by 25%;
• nutrient losses, the use and risk of chemical pesticides, the use of the more hazardous ones, and the sale of antimicrobials for farmed animals and in aquaculture by 50%;
• plastic litter at sea by 50% and microplastics released into the environment by 30%;
• total waste generation significantly and residual municipal waste by 50%.

EU air quality standards are still breached in over 100 cities in the EU. The Commission will continue to encourage, motivate, and work with cities under the recent Green City Accord (a movement of European mayors committed to making cities cleaner and healthier, with five focus areas) to commit to stepping up their local action on air, noise, water, nature and biodiversity, the circular economy, and waste. The Horizon Europe Cities Mission will support 100 cities in their transition towards climate neutrality by 2030. Urban greening and innovation need to prevent pollution, including indoors. Cities making the most progress will be awarded as the Green Region of the Year, possibly in the context of REGIOSTARS.

Digital solutions for zero pollution in smart cities are also encouraged. The Commission also supports regional transboundary water cooperation for river and sea basins management. Since pollution may be distributed unevenly, comparisons of health consequences of pollution across regions will be made to identify inequalities. This will be achieved through the contribution of pollution data to the Cancer Inequalities Registry and the Atlas of Demography, as well as the evaluation for the need for an Inequalities Register for other pollution-related diseases. Furthermore, the Commission will consider promoting depolluted and renaturalised sites as potential public green areas as part of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, contributing to reducing inequalities in access to green infrastructures.

The Zero Pollution Action Stakeholder Platform keeps track of the plan’s targets, ongoing, and completed actions within the different aspects of the strategy. It includes reports on the 9 flagships and 33 actions: https://environment.ec.europa.eu/zero-pollution-stakeholder-platform/actions_en#actions.

Furthermore, a report was published on the monitoring and outlook of the Action Plan, detailing the progress made towards the targets set in the plan: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52022DC0674&from=EN.