Europe agrees to Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment

At a meeting held yesterday evening in Brussels, the Parliament and the Council agreed to a target of 4kg per inhabitant per year for the separate collection of waste electronics from private households. All costs from the collection, treatment, re-use and recycling are to be covered by the producers, who will have to provide a financial guarantee at the moment a new product is put on the market. The guarantee will ensure that the management of the waste will be paid for once the equipment reaches the end of its life.

Welcoming the agreement, environment commissioner Margot Wallstrom said: “Now we can be confident that when we dispose of our mobile phone, video recorder or PC they are not simply landfilled. The consumer will be able to return equipment at its end of life free of charge and send it for environmentally sound treatment, re-use and recycling.”

According to European Union figures, waste electrical and electronic equipment is the fastest growing part of the modern waste stream, with the average European producing around 14kg of waste per year in that area.

Producer Responsibility
The new regulations will allow producers to either manage their obligated waste individually or in collective schemes and it is thought that a number of UK packaging compliance schemes are interested in getting involved in this area.

“I am particularly happy that we could convince Member States to strengthen the individual responsibility of producers for the waste from their products,” Commissioner Wallstrom said. “This will be an important incentive to producers to take the environmental consequences into account when they stand around the design table.”

The new regulations include a restriction on the use of hazardous substances in new electronic equipment. The Directive will ban the use of heavy metals lead, cadmium, mercury and hexavalent chromium in the manufacture of electrical goods as well as the brominated flame retardants PBB and PBDE from July 2006. Electronic equipment is responsible for around 40% of all lead in landfills and 50% of the lead in incinerators.

The UK will now have 18 months in which to transpose the new Directive into a national law, with producer responsibility due to kick in by around March 2005 and recovery and recycling targets taking effect in early 2006.