Update on the WEEE recast

Pincvision visited the 9th International Recycling Congress in Salzburg, Austria, which was held from 20 to 22 January. At this congress, Karl-Heinz Florenz, member of the European parliament indicated in which direction the European Commission (EC) wants to go with the WEEE Recast (expected to come into force mid 2012).

Key message was that in the future the key emphasis of the Commission will be on bringing raw materials from end of life products back into industrial circulation. According to Mister Florenz climate change is not the biggest problem. Everybody can envisage a car with zero CO2 emittance. Providing enough raw materials for a sustainable economic growth will be a far more important issue in the next 10 years. This will require immediate action.

Another topic discussed was the lack of harmonization of registration throughout Europe. The EC wants a more flexible registration system where there is competition in registration and only one registration system. The EC stresses that it is important to them that the internal market is functioning. At the moment there are huge differences amongst Member States; some do too much, some do too little. More European legislative coordination and a more precise regulation for competitive problems is required.

The Industry is concerned about to the collection target of 65%, based on the average weight of products put on the market in the two preceding years. Mister Florenz thinks 65% collection is possible. Maybe not in the next five or six years, but 40% in 2013 should be feasible. In this regard it is a problem that only 30 to 40% of WEEE goes to proper parties. Millions of tonnes of waste go out of Europe where the recycling efficiency is 90%. In Ghana or Nigeria, where the WEEE is shipped, the recycling efficiency is only 25%. This is highly undesirable in the framework of the objectives of the WEEE directive. Mister Florenz says this is unacceptable, which paves the way for more stringent enforcement on illegal waste transportation.

Another thing that calls for a lot of lobby activities is that producers will ‘at least’ be financially responsible for WEEE deposited at collection facilities. This could indicate that producers will have to finance ‘door to door’ collection. This will drive WEEE costs up; estimations range from 5 to 10 billions of extra costs! But the Commission thinks it makes no sense to collect from houses and that users also have a responsibility.

The congress was a very useful platform to get an update on the latest developments with regard to the WEEE recast. If you have any specific interest in the WEEE recast in more detail, feel free to contact us.

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