The recast of the Directive 2002/96/EC on waste electric and electronic equipment fails to address the major concerns raised by the European appliance industry

February 2012 - From the Print Edition

The Opportunity to improve Europe’s environment and improve its resource efficiency is wasted
During the Trilogue which took place on 20 th December, the European Union policy makers came to an agreement on how to take the revision of Europe’s WEEE Directive forward towards a second reading agreement. Regretfully the agreement, voted by the European Parliament on January the 19th, fails to deal with a key issue: the large share of WEEE handled by operators not contracted by producers.

Failure to correct Article 11.1 means two-thirds of WEEE falls outside Directive’s recycling requirement
Luigi Meli, CECED Director General: “The decision to side-step the issue of what happens to WEEE handled by other operators is very disappointing. By failing to correct article 11.1 of the WEEE revision, policy makers have chosen to discard the fact that in today’s Europe WEEE is handled by many other operators that are not producers nor working on their behalf. Under this agreement, e-waste handled by these other operators will continue to fall outside the recycling requirements that e-waste treatment by producers have to meet.”
“Policy makers have acknowledged that this is an issue during the revision process so it’s surprising that they have done little to tackle it in this agreement”. In April 2008, the combined Dutch WEEE recycling systems published a research report that showed that out of a total of 18.5 kg of WEEE that is generated per inhabitant per year, 14.8 kg (80%) is recycled but only 5.7kg (31%) is recycled by the producer funded WEEE systems, with the majority of WEEE recycled by commercial collectors. There are many ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ commercial collectors, which are handling WEEE from scrap dealers, retailers, municipalities or other.
Producers cannot control these commercial collectors. Producers do not have enforcement powers to force WEEE or evidence of WEEE collection and recycling to be given to producer schemes. Member States, on the other hand, are the only ones in control of the key instruments to require data on all WEEE flows to be reported.

Escaping WEEE problem will worsen as value of e-waste increases
The failure to ensure all WEEE is covered by the directive’s treatment and recycling requirements means that Europe’s WEEE problem is set to get worse. The revised legislation will allow de facto cherry-picking. Materials such as copper, steel and aluminium can all be extracted from many discarded appliances. The problem will be worsened as prices rise along with demand for raw materials. Since scarce resources, such as rare earth metals, are more difficult to extract unless the WEEE is treated correctly, these will now be lost as waste. Meanwhile it is unclear what will happen to other materials that have little or no commercial value.
Measuring the collection rate according to only WEEE collected by producers’ compliance schemes risks leading to profiteering and to increasing the costs of WEEE compliance with no environmental benefit. Measuring the collection rate according to only WEEE collected by producers will mean that municipalities and B2B end users could sell their WEEE to third party actors who can then sell this onto producers at a later date when they need to comply with the collection target. This would mean that producers could be forced to pay a much higher price for compliance.
Profiteering in some markets led to costs arising from the WEEE Directive being inflated by up to 50 per cent.

Europe’s e-waste problem: why it will get worse
Luigi Meli: “More e-waste could have been properly recycled with an approach that laid out requirements to cover all WEEE. This would have contributed to a reduction in environmental pollution and improved resource efficiency in Europe. The opportunity has been missed.”
“Our industry successfully treats an estimated 1.5 million tonnes of WEEE each year. It will continue to treat all WEEE that is handed to it.
It will continue to respect strong treatment and recycling requirements as laid out by the Directive. We urge policy makers to take another look at Europe’s fastest growing waste stream and accept that in addition to producers other operators that are not contracted by producers and who handle WEEE should be obligated to respect the same standards”.
Developing harmonized collection, treatment and recycling standards can contribute to the realization of the environmental objectives of the Directive while giving industries a level playing field.
Standards written by European Standardization Organizations represent the state of the art and participation in the highly technical preparatory process of the development of the standard is open to all interested stakeholders, including Member States representatives, industry experts, enforcement authorities, environmental NGOs, etc.
Harmonized standards provide requirements that are the same throughout Europe.
Furthermore, the New Legislative Framework provides a mechanism for questioning and correcting standards that are thought to be deficient, something that would also need to be established should the requirements be contained within a delegated act.
The New Legislative Framework foresees a formal mechanism to object to a harmonized Standard to ensure that it is entirely satisfactory.
Elsewhere CECED is disappointed that policy makers have opted for a progressively increasing collection target (45% after four years to 65% after seven years) based on EEE placed on the market rather than a collection rate calculated according to WEEE that is actually generated.
The WEEE generated concept is only mentioned in the text as a possible alternative seven years after the year of entry into force of the revised Directive. Responsibility for collection targets have also not been placed with the one entity that could ensure enforcement: member states.
By lowering the ambition of the target, and proposing derogations for certain Member States, the Council and the Parliament indicated that one target, based on “Placed on the Market”, for all Member States has its own drawbacks.
A collection target based on the amount of EEE Placed on Market would lead to a de facto collection target that in some Member States would be impossible to achieve, due to the large increases in sales of EEE during recent years and because consumers keep the EEE they have purchased for a longer time and therefore not sufficient WEEE is available. This is not an environmental problem as such. As long as the products have not been disposed of by consumers they are not WEEE and do not create an environmental problem.