A vote was passed at a conciliatory meeting in Strasbourg today, which will lead to the implementation of the Directives into Member States' domestic laws in September 2004 with obligations beginning September 2005.
The significant aspects of the agreed Directives include a collection target of 4kg per capita per year, a band on the use of heavy metals and toxic flame retardants in goods by July 2006 and the ruling that individual producers should be responsible for financing the waste treatment of their own products.
German MEP Karl-Heinz Florenz, who steered the legislation through the European Parliament, said the new laws “meet the needs of consumers, environmentalists and industry”.
Key points of the new legislation include:
- A compulsory household collection target of 4 kg, by the end of 2006, with a new target to be established by the end of 2008.
- Compulsory producer responsibility for financing the management of consumer electronic and electrical waste.
- Producers able to use collective or individual financing schemes.
- Heavy metals and toxic flame retardants used in the manufacture of appliances will be banned from July 2006.
- Member States must take measures to minimise the disposal of WEEE by consumers as unsorted municipal waste.
- Producers banned from preventing re-use or recycling of products with “clever chips” such as those seen in some printer cartridges.
- Costs of treating historical waste to be shared proportionately between producers on the market when the costs arise.
- Up-front financial guarantees to be made by producers to guard against costs arising from orphan WEEE.
Some contentious issues for manufacturers have been what would happen to “historical waste” and “orphan products”.
Costs from treating historical waste – products put on the market up to 30 months after the Directives enter into force – will be shared out between existing manufacturers. There could be more than one system to handle this, but the new legislation states that producers will contribute proportionately, according to their share of the market by type of equipment.
Orphan products – products whose manufacturers or importers go bankrupt or are untraceable – will be prevented through a system of up-front financial 'guarantees'. These could take the form of a 'recycling insurance', a blocked bank account or an up-front contribution to a waste management scheme.
Earlier this week, the manufacturers Electrolux, Hewlett-Packard, Sony and Gillette-owned Braun announced that they will work together to draw up WEEE guidelines and organise recycling contracts (see letsrecycle.com story).
For more information on the WEEE Directive see the letsrecycle.com legislation section.
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