• ‘substantial amounts of hazardous waste are generated in repair operations’ (bad batteries, mercury lamps, CRTs, and circuit board) for which adequate treatment facilities are not available in the country; and
• the new criteria would be exploited by waste brokers.

Next steps 

• invite parties to serve as the lead country for the development of the guidelines and inform the Secretariat of their willingness to do so by 31 July 2013;
• invite submission of examples of when used equipment should normally be considered waste (or not) by 15 September 2013;
• request the lead country to prepare draft revised technical guidelines for publication by 30 November 2013; and
• invite comments on the draft revised technical guidelines by 28 February 2014.

• Basel Convention website on  technical guidelines on e-waste
• COP 11 website 
• News item on COP10
• ANNEX VI (Minimum requirements for shipments) of WEEE Directive 2012/19/EUand Correspondent guidelines to Waste Shipment Regulation 1013/2006/EC

• Regulations and Directives linked to eco-design (WEEE,  RoHS,  EuP and REACH as well as  eco-labels) ;
• Eco design tools (ISO standards, life cycle analysis, indicators …) ;
• Plans to improve the recycling of EEE, organised by type of equipment (7 sample products including washing machines, printers and mobile phones) and secondary materials stream.

• supports the setting-up of a ‘Raw Materials and Rare Earths Stability Board’ in the G20
   
• calls on the Commission to establish a ‘risk radar for critical raw materials’ and to analyse current and future needs and prices as well as the negative effects of shortages with regard to the renewable-energy, high-technology, defence and automotive sectors
   
• calls on the Commission to review how the Eco-Design Directive, the Directive on End-of-Life Vehicles, the WEEE Directive and the Battery Waste Directive could be modified so as to increase recycling also for valuable raw materials, including rare earth metals, and by more specific requirements on dismantling
   
• emphasises the need to combat the illegal shipment of recyclable materials, particularly electronic waste
   
• stresses that the Commission should give attention to the different recycling strategies needed for mass metals and for critical raw materials such as Rare Earth Metals
   
• calls on the Commission to couple research funding on raw materials such as Rare Earth Metals  with clear goals, such as for example the Japanese target of reducing Rare Earth Metals consumption by one third

The content of the published regulation contains no changes from the version agreed by the Technical Adaptation Committee on 1 July 2010, which we analysed in the news item of 23 July 2010.

Link: Regulation 1103/2010/EC

The Council’s roles include

• acting as an independent forum for discussion on product stewardship developments;
• providing a web-based clearing-house for the dissemination of information and research on product stewardship on a free or at-cost basis;
• providing international linkages on product stewardship; and
• carrying out research on product stewardship as endorsed by the Council’s Executive Committee.

The Australian Government has appointed the GPSC to its new Stakeholder Reference Group to advise the Government on the development of framework legislation on product stewardship.

The President of the GPSC is Russ Martin, of the Australian consultancy MS2. David Perchard of Perchards Ltd is the Vice-President, and the other members of the Executive Committee are Scott Cassel, of the Product Stewardship Institute in the USA; Ed Cordner, of the Australian Packaging Covenant ; Neil Hastie, of Encorp Pacific which runs British Columbia’s beverage and milk containers and electronics recycling programmes in Canada; Garth Hickle, Product Stewardship Team Leader at the State of Minnesota Pollution Control Agency in the US; and Rose Read, of MobileMuster, the recycling programme of the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association.

More information about the GPSC can be found at www.productstewardshipcouncil.net.

• mailing pouches for catalogues and magazines (with a magazine inside);
• cake doilies sold with a cake;
• rolls, tubes and cylinders around which flexible material (e.g. plastic film, aluminium, paper) is wound, except rolls, tubes and cylinders intended as parts of production machinery and not used to present a product as a sales unit;
• flower pots intended to be used only for the selling and transporting of plants and not intended to stay with the plant throughout its life time;
• glass bottles for injection solutions;
• CD spindles (sold with CDs, not intended to be used as storage);
• clothes hangers (sold with an item of clothing);
• matchboxes;
• sterile barrier systems (pouches, trays and materials necessary to preserve the sterility of the product);
• beverage system capsules (e.g. coffee, cocoa, milk) which are left empty after use;
• refillable steel cylinders used for various kinds of gas, excluding fire extinguishers. 

• clothes hangers (sold separately);
• beverage system coffee capsules, coffee foil pouches, and filter paper coffee pods disposed of together with the used coffee product;
• printer cartridges;
• CD, DVD and video cases (sold together with a CD, DVD or video inside);
• CD spindles (sold empty, intended to be used for storage);
• soluble bags for detergents;
• grave side lights (containers for candles);
• mechanical quern integrated into a refillable container (e.g. a refillable pepper mill);
• wrapping paper (sold separately);
• paper baking cases (sold empty);
• cake doilies sold without a cake; and
• radio frequency identification (RFID) tags.

• material recycling
• water
• sustainable building products
• green business
• the food and drink sector.

• Regulations and Directives linked to eco-design (WEEE,  RoHS,  EuP and REACH as well as  eco-labels) ;
• Eco design tools (ISO standards, life cycle analysis, indicators …) ;
• Plans to improve the recycling of EEE, organised by type of equipment (7 sample products including washing machines, printers and mobile phones) and secondary materials stream.

• Scope
• Substance restrictions
• Exemptions
• Alignment of the Directive with the New Legislative Framework
• Terms and Definitions
• Review
• Transposition
• Comitology

•  It urges the Commission and the Member States to agree, by 2013, on “clear, robust and measurable” indicators for economic activity that take account of climate change, biodiversity and resource-efficiency from a life-cycle perspective.  The Resolution suggests that this could take the form of a basket of four resource use indicators (land footprint, water footprint, material footprint and carbon footprint) which could be used as a basis for legislative initiatives and concrete reduction targets.
   
• It calls on the Commission to propose an extension of the scope of the eco-design directive to non-energy related products, and to come forward with additional eco-design requirements for the overall resource efficiency and performance of products, including recycled content, durability, recyclability, repairability and reusability.
   
• It calls on the Commission to propose, by the end of 2012, a new Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) policy framework, establishing a process for identifying the priority products or services which contribute the most to the key global consumption areas (water, land, materials and carbon).  This should be accompanied by legislative proposals addressing priority products and services, with tools including mechanisms that can improve supply chain resource efficiency and the possibility of setting minimum requirements or best performance benchmarks through implementing measures.
   
• It calls on the Commission and the Member States to develop incentives that encourage companies and public bodies to measure, benchmark and continuously improve their water, land, material and carbon footprints, as well as measures to extend the producer responsibility principle and to remove barriers that hold back resource efficiency.
   
• It urges the Commission to investigate opportunities for setting up EU-wide extended producer responsibility schemes to drive performance in all Member States, including those where reuse and recycling rates are much lower than the EU average.
   
• It calls for environmental information requirements to be extended to cover conventional mass consumer goods (a pilot project is already underway in France).  The Resolution also urges the Commission to work on developing a harmonised European method for calculating a product's environmental footprint, with a view to providing consumers with more information on products not covered by existing schemes such as the eco-labelling, energy labelling and organic farming labelling schemes.
   
• It asks the Commission and the Member States to take the necessary steps to improve current labelling regulation through integration of labels, allowing consumers to make, in one overview, well-informed and sustainable choices through an “all-encompassing” label including, but not limited to, information on resource use in products.
   
• It calls on the Commission to consider the need to improve and harmonise calculation methods and statistics relating to waste, in order to provide a reliable basis to promote recycling.
   
• It points out that more than 20% of food is disposed of as refuse, and calls on the Commission and Member States for concrete actions to significantly reduce food waste.  The Resolution points out that it is not only food which is wasted, but also the resources used for food processing and packaging.
   
• It calls on the Commission to make proposals by 2014 with a view to gradually introducing a general European ban on landfilling waste and for the phasing-out of incineration of recyclable and compostable waste by the end of the decade.  The Resolution also calls on the Commission to revise the 2020 recycling targets of the Waste Framework Directive.  The Parliament believes that a landfill tax (already in place in some Member States) could also help achieve these ends.

• material recycling
• water
• sustainable building products
• green business
• the food and drink sector.

• ‘substantial amounts of hazardous waste are generated in repair operations’ (bad batteries, mercury lamps, CRTs, and circuit board) for which adequate treatment facilities are not available in the country; and
• the new criteria would be exploited by waste brokers.

Next steps 

• invite parties to serve as the lead country for the development of the guidelines and inform the Secretariat of their willingness to do so by 31 July 2013;
• invite submission of examples of when used equipment should normally be considered waste (or not) by 15 September 2013;
• request the lead country to prepare draft revised technical guidelines for publication by 30 November 2013; and
• invite comments on the draft revised technical guidelines by 28 February 2014.

• Basel Convention website on  technical guidelines on e-waste
• COP 11 website 
• News item on COP10
• ANNEX VI (Minimum requirements for shipments) of WEEE Directive 2012/19/EUand Correspondent guidelines to Waste Shipment Regulation 1013/2006/EC

• key targets in the Waste Framework Directive, the Landfill Directive and the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive;
   
• an ex-post evaluation ("fitness check") of the waste stream Directives (including packaging, WEEE, batteries and end-of-life vehicles); and
   
• an assessment of how the problem of plastic waste can be better tackled.

• How can sustainable sourcing be managed?
• Is product design the most efficient way to promote resource efficiency?
• Would the extension of producer responsibility be an efficient way of incentivizing resource efficiency?
• What are the barriers to and drivers for new resource efficient business models?
• What is the role of the consumer? How can barriers to change in behaviour be overcome?
• Which instruments are most appropriate to help SMEs?