Bjerregaard to push ahead with electronic waste rules

Date: 10/06/1999

By Peter Chapman

ACTING Environment Commissioner Ritt Bjerregaard is set to defy critics of her controversial proposals to force electronics firms to collect and recycle their equipment.

Sources say the Danish Commissioner will offer few changes to earlier drafts of her plan when she circulates the latest version among other Commission departments later this month.

Earlier attempts to launch the proposal foundered as industry groups and overseas trade partners attacked some of its key provisions, including plastic recycling targets of 5%, mandatory collection schemes for old kit, and a ban on lead and certain flame-retarding chemicals.

Electronics and engineering firms welcomed plans for an EU-wide framework but baulked at the proposed obligation to contribute towards the recycling of an average four kilogrammes of equipment per citizen a year, with the precise amount dependent on a company's market share.

Firms preferred a scheme which would allow them to phase in targets for certain products over a longer period. They also challenged plans to make them foot the bill for treating equipment put on the market long before the directive enters into force. Most controversial of all, however, was was the proposed ban on lead, which would require companies to find alternatives by 2004 to the substance used to solder together components.

Insiders say Bjerregaard is likely to offer to drop the plastic recycling target in a bid to win support for the rules from the Commission's industry and foreign trade departments, which sympathise with industry's fears.

But critics believe some of the other proposals, including the move to ban lead, could still land the Commission in deep water with trading partners such as Japan and the US, as they would hit foreign firms operating in markets where there were few alternatives to lead.

The rules could also fall foul of World Trade Organisation requirements because substance bans have to be justified in advance on scientific grounds, and the EU has not yet studied the need for an embargo.

However, a Commission expert said the Directorate-General for environmental policy (DGXI) was confident the proposed directive would comply with world trade rules.

Sensitivities about the waste plan have been heightened by suggestions that environment officials would be tempted to take the same approach to other sectors. "It marks a shift in waste management policy. The approach puts responsibility on producers and users, not just the taxpayer or municipalities. After that, we can ask why just electronics? Why not furniture or other equipment?" said one.