News

The meeting agenda of the pan-European organisation we are part of included the WEEELABEX project (details on www.weee-forum.org, WEEELABEX section), specific solutions for the collection of small equipment and technical discussions on the proposal for the amendment of Directive 2002/96/EC.
The representatives of the European Commission expressed their satisfaction with the WEEELABEX project and approved that it may continue to be co-financed. It was decided to divide the project in two categories, depending on the activities:
• Guidelines / best practice norms for collection activities
• Standards for treatment / recycling / recovery
There were discussions on technical aspects of collection and treatment of equipment with LCD screens, taking into account the fact that these will represent an important WEEE flow in the following years. The working group also assessed alternative technical solutions for recycling glass resulted from the treatment of cathode ray tubes (CRT), given the fact that cathode ray tubes manufacturing is in decline and it will probably stop completely in the future.
The participants discussed ways to stimulate the collection of small appliances, so that the consumers no longer throw them away together with household waste. Due to their reduced size, many such appliances are thrown to the dust bin and end up on landfills. The organisation wants to find solutions to combat these practices.
With regard to the technical discussions on the proposal for the amendment of Directive 2002/96/EC, a special interest was shown for Denmark’s proposal to reduce the number of categories of equipment and waste equipment from 10 to 5, on the basis of the five existing WEEE treatment technologies.