IEEP & IES Environmental Policy Forum

Orsolya Csorba began her presentation with an overview of waste generation in the EU. Each year, about 9 million tones of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) are generated EU-wide. By 2020 this is anticipated to grow to 12.3 million tones. WEEE contains hazardous substances that, before the introduction of the WEEE Directive in 2004, mostly went into landfill, incineration or recovery without pre-treatment leading to leakages into soil and ground water. The revision of the WEEE Directive aims at further improving the handling of WEEE to ensure appropriate treatment and better product design. At the moment, only 1/3 of the WEEE on the EU market is officially reported as collected and treated according to the provisions of the WEEE Directive. 13% still goes into landfill and 54% is illegally shipped to 3rd countries or is treated within the EU in unauthorized plants. The new legislative proposal sets a collection target of 65% by weight of a Member State market by producer by 2016. Monitoring requirements for waste shipments and reuse and recycle targets are proposed. It is also proposed to make producers responsible for the collection of WEEE from households. So far, this was in the responsibility of municipalities. This provision aims at remedying the leakage of valuable parts of WEEE. Leakages occur because some waste products contain metals that are valuable raw materials and therefore represent business opportunities for other actors. Additionally, Ms Csorba stressed that the WEEE Directive has a positive impact on the labour market since recycling creates five to seven times more jobs than incineration.

In response to Ms Csorba’s presentation, Viktor Sundberg presented a producer’s perspective on the legislative proposal. He stressed that, when the initial WEEE Directive was introduced, WEEE was considered a cost. Nowadays, with increasing raw material prices, waste has a value. Whereas, Mr Sundberg agreed with the Commission’s analysis of which items should be revised, he disagreed with the way these issues are addressed. Initially, WEEE is owned by consumers. They have to take the first initiative to bring their waste electronics to a collection point. Producers cannot prevent consumers from bringing their WEEE to other actors. These other actors enter the market in cases of WEEE items that have a value such as washing machines, which have a high metal content. These other collectors are not producers and, hence, are not covered by the WEEE Directive. Consequently, they can treat waste in “cheaper” ways. Those actors should be included in the Directive and the WEEE they collect should be reported under the Directive. Furthermore, Mr Sundberg stressed that more enforcement is needed. Member States have to check compliance with the WEEE Directive.

Nathalie Cliquot reacted to both previous speakers and provided an environmental NGO perspective. She described the legislative proposal as a good starting point. The issues that are addressed in the review are the “right” ones. However, implementation of the Directive should be improved. It is still not fully operational in all EU Member States. Therefore, in order to ease implementation, the revised Directive should not be a complete departure from the existing piece of legislation. Ms Cliquot stressed the problem of small appliances. So far, a large part of the collection targets have been met by treating large appliances not paying too much attention to small electronics. For example, light bulbs are still not collected separately in large numbers. With the phasing out of incandescent light bulbs the amount of energy efficient light bulbs, which contain mercury, in domestic use will increase. If these small products are not collected and treated appropriately, the environmental damage from mercury leakage could increase. For this reason, Ms Cliquot suggested separate targets for specific product groups. The promotion of reuse and recycling should be increased, according to her.

In the discussion, Mr Sundberg suggested that the WEEE Directive should state that municipalities should collect a maximum of WEEE that would then have to be treated by producers to 100%. He warned that a situation might occur in which municipalities raise waste taxes, charge producers for WEEE collection and sell valuable waste to other actors. Ms Cliquot replied by stressing that targets and benchmarks are needed to ensure that the EU’s ambitions are met. Ms Csorba explained that the objective of the legislative proposal is to make producers responsible for the collection of WEEE in order to avoid that other actors get access to valuable waste. Making producers responsible leads to the internalization of costs, which is a fairer method than a tax that charges the same amount from every citizen, no matter whether he/she disposes of many and complex electronics or of barely any products. Ms Cliquot underlined that the proposed continuation of visible fees on products contradicts the individual producer responsibility philosophy since uniform fees do not reflect the recyclability and design improvements of products. Ms Csorba replied that the visible fee is intended to reflect the actual price of recycling of a particular product. Ms Cliquot responded that this would be difficult because visible fees are mostly used in collective systems where producers pay according to market share and not according to recyclability of their own products. A representative from the retailer IKEA stressed the importance of the eco-design stage in improving the environmental impact of a product. Producers can influence this aspect. However, influencing consumer behaviour is difficult. The steps undertaken by the Commission to look at the EU as one market as opposed to 27 markets were welcomed. Retailers without own branded products have no influence on eco-design but they have obligations to collect WEEE. A representative of the WEEE Forum reminded that, currently, producers already pay for different services at collection sites. But this varies according to Member State. A representative of the Dutch environment ministry welcomed the proposed annex 1 to the Directive. This makes it easier for enforcement authorities to act when WEEE leaves EU ports. Provisions that allow Member States to trace where waste comes from could be strengthened. The discussion was concluded by Ms Csarba anticipating that the legislative procedure on the revision of the WEEE Directive will only be taken up after the elections to the European Parliament.