The vision of the European Parliament on the WEEE management contradicts the approach of the Romanian Ministry of Enviro

The vote of the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) Committee of the European Parliament on the second reading phase of the recast of the Directive 2002/96/EC fundamentally contradicts the approach of the Romanian Ministry of Environment and Forests for the revision of the internal legislation on waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE)

November 2011 - From the Print Edition

The Committee for Environment of the European Parliament (ENVI) voted on 4th of October 2011, with a large majority (52 for, 1 against and 5 abstentions) according to the recast procedure of the Directive 2002/96/EC on waste electric and electronic equipment, “second reading phase”, the proposals of the raporteur Karl-Heinz Florenz.
These are almost identical with the proposals adpoted in the „first reading phase“ and are very different, even opposed to the approach of the Romanian Ministry of Environment expressed in the Governmental Decision 1037/2010 and its subseqvent legal acts which were described in our previous series of articles entitled “The Industry Under Threat“.

Collection target

While the Romanian Ministry of Environment shifted all the responsibility to the industry and imposed collection targets based on the quantities of new equipment put on the market, the ENVI Committee reconfirmed the position of the European Parliament for a target based on the generated waste in the responsibility of the Member States. A collection target based on the amount of “WEEE Generated”, as proposed by the European Parliament, has distinct advantages compared to a target based on EEE placed on the market:
* The responsibility for achieving the target stays with the actor that has the enforcement power, i.e. the Member State. Member States should be responsible for meeting the collection target because the producers cannot control all the other actors who collect WEEE to make a profit. In addition, the producers do not have enforcement powers. Member States, on the other hand, are the only ones in control of the key instruments to both organize and enforce the collection target, and therefore should retain responsibility for achieving these targets.
* A target based on WEEE generated would require all WEEE flows to be measured and included in the collection rate. For B2C, this would mean that any WEEE leaving the private household would be taken into account in the calculation of the target. This includes all WEEE that has been properly treated regardless of whether it was treated by a recycling system managed by producers or whether it was treated by other WEEE actors or recyclers, any WEEE that was sent to export or discarded in any other way.
* The new target, as proposed by the European Parliament, would fit all Member States. There would be no need to negotiate different target levels for individual Member States because a collection target based on the amount of WEEE Generated will ensure that an achievable level is set for each Member State, since it is based on the real amounts of WEEE. A target based on the amount of WEEE Generated would take into account differences between Member States that influence the real generation of waste, such as history, economic development, differences in technology development; differences in product life cycles and differences in consumer behavior. The responsibility and execution of calculating WEEE generated on the bases of a common methodology should lie with the Member State.

Inclusion of all actors

While the Romanian authorities choose to ignore the collection and dismantling of waste electric and electronic equipment by other actors (the GD 1037/2010 contains no provisions regarding this issue), the European Parliament proposed specific measures for the monitoring and enforcement of the legislation.
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 the 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.
Member States should ensure that all WEEE flows are measured and included in the collection rate. This includes all WEEE that has been properly treated regardless of whether it was treated by a recycling system managed by producers or whether it was treated by other WEEE actors or recyclers.

Harmonized standards

The European Parliament clearly expressed its opinion in favor of harmonized standards for the WEEE management.
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.