European regulations

European legislation
Because of the steady growth in waste production, the EU has drafted specific legislation to reduce trash. The EU directives also target hazardous waste reduction, making producers responsible. In addition, they promote reclamation projects and added-value aspects of waste products.

At present, the environmental laws passed by Member States are based on European directives.

• The framework directive of 1975 (75/442/EEC)

General framework:

• The “landfill” directive (1999/31/EC)
• The European directive on waste incineration (2000/76/EC)

Waste from specific activities:

• The European WEEE directive (2002/96/CE)
• The European directive concerning end-of-life vehicles (2000/53/EC)

General Framework

The Framework Directive of 1975 (75/442/EEC) stipulates the basic principles relating to waste collection, elimination, reuse and treatment, and which can be schematically summarised as two principles:

• The Polluter-Pays principle.
• The principle of prioritising treatment procedures. The directive invites Member States to focus on: 1. Prevention. 2. Re-use. 3. Recycling. 4. Energy recovery. 5. Elimination.

This directive is currently under revision.

The “landfill” directive (1999/31/EC) defines three types of landfills corresponding to three types of waste:

• Class I landfills, for hazardous waste
• Class II landfills, for non-hazardous waste
• Class III landfills, for inert waste

It fixes the objective for the Member States to reduce the proportion of waste placed in landfills and provides that only waste that has undergone prior treatment be admitted, and that the waste be monitored for the thirty years after its disposal at the site.

The European directive on garbage incineration (2000/76/EC) sets out new environmental thresholds, in particular those governing dioxin emissions; the threshold for dioxin emissions should no exceed 0.1 ng/m³.

At present, these different directives are not always complied with by the Member States. However, the Commission has various levers at its disposal that it does not hesitate to use when dealing with States that refuse to cooperate. For example, Italy was brought before the European Court of Justice for non-compliance with some of the provisions of the 1975 framework directive. It has also brought several procedures against Greece for breach of European Union rules governing environmental protection. This is probably the price of introducing a genuine European waste policy.
 

Waste from specific activities
European WEEE directive (2002/96/CE) on waste electrical and electronic equipment, in particular requires:

• products design-related measures, particularly to reduce the heavy metals used in electrical and electronic equipment,
• the implementation of collection, treatment and, in particular, reclamation systems (selective treatment of some components and so-called hazardous substances : printed circuit boards, gas discharge lamps, mercury, etc.
• producer participation in these measures in order to encourage them to incorporate recycling from the design phase.

Introducing the principle of producer responsibility, this directive obliges the producers of household and professional WEEE to finance their collection from the pick-up point, as well as the treatment, reclamation and elimination of the WEEE concerned.

End-of-life vehicles covered by European directive (2000/53/EC)

The sad sight of a wrecked car thrown into the bottom of a river is becoming increasingly rare. In order to improve the processing of car waste even further, a new regulation now requires owners of out-of-use vehicles (OUV) to hand them over to an approved operator for demolition, or risk being unable to cancel the vehicle registration number.

It will be difficult to evade the obligation and wrecks will have to be systematically remediated before disposal.

That supposes that all the materials must be extracted from the vehicles and better use is made of whatever can be re-used, recycled or recovered.

The task is colossal: according to the figures provided by ONDA (the French National Car Waste Observatory), 520,000 used batteries were collected in 2005 with a recovery rate of more than 75%: the lead is melted, refined and used in new batteries, and the plastic is extruded for use in the composition of new automobile parts.

Still according to the directive, the recycling rate must reach 80% and the recovery rate must reach 85% as of 2006, and 85 and 95% respectively by 2015. In partnership with INDRA, the French leader in the certified management-distribution of OUV, SITA, the waste subsidiary of SUEZ ENVIRONMENT, proposes to treat the waste in two ways: fast crushing of the vehicles as they are, followed by separation of the fractions that can be recovered, such as scrap metal, non-ferrous metal, plastics, and so on.

The operation is relatively inexpensive, but material recovery is technically limited because large quantities of final waste are produced as a result.

It is also possible to separate the various materials before crushing them, which maximizes material recovery.

In the long run, this method is the only one able to meet regulatory requirements, even though it is more expensive.