Tougher WEEE collection target poses challenge to UK
04-Dec-08
Proposed revisions to the EU Directives on WEEE and RoHS, unveiled by the European Commission on Tuesday, include tougher waste collection targets and a mechanism to make it easier to widen the range of banned hazardous substances.
Posing new challenges for the UK, the proposed waste electrical and electronics equipment (WEEE) legislation introduces a new target to collect 65% of WEEE.
Under the 2003 WEEE Directive, each Member State must collect 4kg of WEEE per person per year. This will now be replaced by a target, from 2016, to collect 65% of the average weight of electrical and electronic equipment placed on the market over the two previous years.
According to the Commission, many Member States have already reached the 65% target. However, there is a provision allowing Member States to apply for “transitional measures”.
The UK is likely to have to step up its collection systems in order to comply. Earlier this year, the Environment Agency reported that 1.136 million tonnes of electrical and electronic equipment were placed on the UK market in the second half of 2007. During the same period, only 158,000 toness of household WEEE and 10,100 tonnes of business WEEE was collected.
The Commission will look at setting separate collection targets for fridges and freezers by 2012.
To encourage re-use, the targets for recycling and recovery will now include the re-use of whole appliances. Because re-use currently accounts for around 5% of equipment, the Commission proposes to increase weight-based targets for recycling and recovery by 5%.
The proposal also seeks to beef up producer responsibility requirements by making Member States, “where appropriate”, encourage producers to finance all the costs of separate collection.
To reduce burdens to industry, the Commission proposes to harmonise registration and reporting obligations for producers by allowing them to register in a single Member State for all their activities in the EU. Cost savings from harmonised registration and reporting are estimated to be about €60 million.
Meanwhile, proposed changes to the 2003 Directive on the restriction of hazardous substances (RoHS) will not immediately affect the list of banned substances – but the Directive is to be restructured to make it easier to control new substances in future using the quicker “comitology” procedure instead of the full-blown primary legislation.
The revised Directive would also require the Commission to review the list of banned substances when an unacceptable risk to human health or the environment is identified. The text identifies four substances for priority assessment: the phthalates DEHP, DBP and BBP, and the flame retardant HBCDD.
Bans on six substances – lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium and the brominated flame retardants PBBs and PBDEs – are carried through into the revised text.
The four-year review for exemptions will be replaced with a four-year maximum validity period in order to “stimulate substitution efforts, provide legal security and shift the burden of proof to the applicant”, in line with the REACH Regulation on the registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals.
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