Will electronic and electrical parts of agricultural equipment be subject of recycling schemes? Will certain substances being banned for the electronic parts? CEMA-CECE lobby actions pay off with an exclusion of our machines in the WEEE proposal from European Parliament on 22 June 2010. And the process continues…
In the directives for Waste of electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE) and Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) the scope was determined by lists in annex. The European Commission wants to keep it that way and focus mostly on the actual waste collection percentages and the framework in which the directive is applied. The European parliament opened up the scope and deleted the scope annexes. The main reason is to achieve the inclusion of ALL electronic/electrical equipment, also those that are installed by professionals, but for use in consumer environment (households mostly). This would include also dual use (for both consumer and professional market).
After lobbying of CEMA-CECE through their National Associations, not only did the European Parliament make the necessary amendments for exempting our products, but also on 22 June it was approved in the ENVI committee. Similar exemptions were already approved in the RoHS proposal.
Arguments why Business-to Business products (B2B) used in professional relationships should not fall in the scope of the directives are: firstly, their environmental relevance has not been assessed as significant in the Commission’s preparatory studies, and secondly, such equipment also does not end up in the municipal waste stream. They are disassembled and disposed by specialist personnel and they therefore represent a controlled waste stream.
The final voting at the European Plenary session is postponed until October to give the necessary room for negotiations between the three institutes (European Commission, European Parliament and Council) and to align the WEEE and RoHS proposal. This ‘trialogue’ is intended to make sure that Council would not start deviating too much from the Parliament’s proposal.
Follow up is still necessary.
Background info: In December 2008, the European Commission therefore proposed to revise the directives on electrical and electronic equipment in order to tackle the fast increasing waste stream of such products. The aim is to increase the amount of e-waste that is appropriately treated and to reduce the volume that goes to disposal.
EU legislation restricting the use of hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment (The so called RoHS Directive 2002/95/EC) and promoting the collection and recycling of such equipment (The so called WEEE Directive 2002/96/EC) has been in force since February 2003. The legislation provides for the creation of collection schemes where consumers return their used e-waste free of charge. The objective of these schemes is to increase the recycling and/or re-use of such products. It also requires heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, and hexavalent chromium and flame retardants such as polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) or polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) to be substituted by safer alternatives.
