Second Round of Consultation Launched on Certification Scheme for WEEE & Waste Batteries Collection and Recycling

CEWASTE, a project funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, recently launched the second consultation phase of its voluntary certification scheme. The scheme is aimed at collection, transport and treatment facilities of key types of waste containing significant amounts of valuable and critical raw materials. It seeks to facilitate the increased, and legitimate, recycling of valuable and critical raw materials from waste streams such as those for electrical and electronic equipment and batteries.

As part of its strategy to reach the goal of a greener, more resource efficient and climate resilient economy, the European Commission identified a list of critical raw materials that need special attention due to their economic importance and higher risk of supply interruption. The goal of the project is to contribute to better recovery of critical raw materials, a better informed policy formulation, better stakeholder accountability and enhanced networking between key institutions in the European Union and worldwide.

CEWASTE has taken stock of the requirements defined in existing relevant guidelines and standards in the field of electrical and electronic waste treatment – among others, the CEWASTE document is built on the EN 50625 standard series – and, importantly, only where these are not sufficient to meet all the project’s objectives have new requirements been developed.

A first working draft of the document CEWASTE Requirements for Improving CRM Recycling from WEEE and Waste Batteries was presented to stakeholders (including the CEWASTE Advisory Board) at a meeting in October 2019. After evaluating and integrating the comments from this meeting, a revised version of the document was published for the 1st round of public consultation in December 2019.

The CEWASTE Project
CEWASTE is a two-year project funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. It will develop a voluntary certification scheme for waste treatment. Specifically, the project will create, validate and launch the scheme for collection, transport and treatment facilities of key types of waste containing significant amounts of valuable and critical raw materials such as waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and batteries.

There are nine partners in the project:

World Resources Forum (Switzerland)
Oeko Institut (Germany)
Sofies (Switzerland)
United Nations University (Germany)
WEEE Forum (Belgium)
Austrian Standards International (Austria)
European Electronics Recyclers Association (Netherlands)
European Citizens’ Organisation for Standardisation (Belgium)
Societe Generale de Surveillance (Finland)

During this first round, more than 250 technical and editorial comments were collected and addressed. Based on the feedback, the CEWASTE normative requirements were revised in Summer 2020 and internally reviewed by the project’s Consortium Partners.

The updated document was then validated through 20 pilot audits at relevant collection and recycling facilities that were conducted in autumn 2020. As a result of feedback from these pilot audits, the CEWASTE normative requirements have been further updated and improved and are now presented for this second consultation; the document is available here.

The second round of the consultation process for the development of the CEWASTE normative requirements commences on the 18th of February 2021. This will enable stakeholders to make editorial comments on the eighth working draft of the document CEWASTE Requirements for Improving CRM Recycling from WEEE and Waste Batteries. CEWASTE Project Partners have agreed that technical comments will not be considered in this second round of consultation and if received will not be addressed in the final version of the document. The consultation closes on 12 March 2021.

Further information on the CEWASTE consultation is available here.

Source: WEEE Forum (Brussels, February 18, 2021)

4,050