Organic solvents play a vital role delivering wide benefits to society in producing modern materials including medicines and surface coatings. Post use requires responsible management of resulting waste streams. The European Solvent Recycler Group (ESRG) and Hazardous Waste Europe (HWE) are pleased to announce a programme of co-operation sharing a common interest in promoting high standards to the management of hazardous waste organic solvent streams. Both parties wish to see Sustainability and Environment policies and their associated legislation to be relevant, correctly targeted, and properly implemented and enforced. Joint overall aims of HWE and ESRG’s co-operation is to promote the waste hierarchy and in particular the European Union chemicals strategy developed under the auspices of the sustainability and circular economy agendas. Both entities wish to ensure there is no dispersion of waste or residues, no dilution of waste and emissions in the environment and to ensure traceability throughout the entire waste management chain of solvent recycling and recovery and similarly for other hazardous wastes. In respect of a circular economy contribution and carbon neutrality objective, independent studies have demonstrated that by recovering and reusing organic solvents, savings of up to 90% Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions can be attained compared with the replacing of used solvents by new. Note for Editors: More information is at http://www.esrg-online.eu and www.hazardouswasteeurope.eu ____________________________ HAZARDOUS WASTE EUROPE (HWE) is an international trade body established in 2011 representing 155
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HAZARDOUS WASTE EUROPE was present at the BRS COPs in Geneva Very positive decisions were taken and important revised Technical Guidelines have been adopted or progresses have been made in others for an Environmentally Sound Management of hazardous wastes and other wastes. Also a very good initiative from the Présidence française du Conseil de l’Union européenne, the European Commission and its Member States consisting in gathering challenges in the application of the PIC procedure. Ready to work on this in the coming months! Meetings of the conferences of the Parties to the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions: http://www.brsmeas.org/20212022COPs/Overview/tabid/8395/language/fr-CH/Default.aspx
Hazardous waste Europe really welcomes the outcome of the draft report on the preliminary recommendations for Technical Screening Criteria (TSC) for the EU taxonomy developed by the Technical Working Group of the platform on Sustainable Finance. We fully endorse the high level of ambition in the TSCs for separate collection, transport and treatment of hazardous waste as a means for pollution prevention and control (subchapters 13.1, 13.2 & 13.3): 👍Ensure strict separation of hazardous waste from non-hazardous waste for collection & transport 👍Avoid blending or mixing leading to dilution of hazardous waste and consequences due to inappropriate treatments 👍Ban organic hazardous waste in facilities treating hazardous waste prior to hazardous waste landfilling 👍Prevent or reduce at the minimum the discharge of priority substances and priority hazardous substances in water bodies due to indirect discharge via inappropriate wastewater treatment plants 👍Avoid mismanagement of POP waste, mercury waste and problematic health care waste 👍Guaranty that facilities benefiting from derogations under article 15.4 to the IED will never be taxonomy-aligned HWE would have liked to see the same level of ambition in other sectors (at least regarding derogations mentioned just above…) whose core business is not the treatment of hazardous waste but where hazardous waste end in conditions which lead to uneven playing field with our sector dedicated to the treatment of hazardous
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The 2019 Triple COPs took place in Geneva from the 29th of April to the 10th of May. Governments from across the world have converged on Geneva this week for discussions and decisions aiming at protecting human health and the environment from chemicals and waste. The theme of the COP were » Clean Planet, Healthy People: Sound Management of Chemicals and Waste ». HWE participated actively as observer to the meetings of the conferences of the parties to the Basel ans Stockholm Conventions.
Bound to oversee the proper application of the EU legislation, the EU Commission mandated the consulting firm BIPRO in 2014 to assess the implementation of hazardous waste management in EU Member States. A first study published in 2015 concluded that most requirements of EU legislation on hazardous waste were well transposed into national legislation, but that major gaps exist on statistical data for some Member States. It was decided to launch a second study to further assess hazardous waste and PCB management in 14 selected Member States (Bulgaria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden and the United Kingdom), that has been released this week. Structured around analysis of the current situation regarding hazardous waste and PCB management in the 14 Member States, it proposes some recommendations to improve the management that have been discussed with national authorities and private and public actors during 11 seminars. It brought out challenges regarding the implementation and enforcement of key obligations of the waste framework directive (2008/98 recently amended by 2018/851) concerning hazardous waste such as classification, labelling, permitting, mixing ban, collection, storage and treatment of hazardous waste. Among the key recommendations, the study underlines among other: The importance of classification of hazardous waste as prerequisite for effective planning (having a consistent definition to capture relevant waste
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