Event Details Various E-Scrap Standards

Delegates attending the Ninth International Electronics Recycling Congress (IERC), which took place Jan. 20- 22 in Salzburg, Austria, tackled a broad range of topics affecting the recycling industry. Among the topics covered were the revision of the EU’s Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment; producer responsibility; collection and take-back systems; eco-labeling and auditing; recycling of liquid crystal displays; the environmental benefits of recycling; challenges in metals recycling; and investing during difficult economic times. The program also included country reports and an update on latest recycling technologies. 

One of the recurrent themes of this year’s IERC was e-scrap standards covering the collection, transportation, reporting and processing of electronics as well as the auditing and certification of electronics recyclers.

In Europe, the WEEE Forum has been addressing these issues since last year. The ultimate goal of the Forum—whose 21 members engaged in collection and take-back schemes for electronic scrap within the EU , collecting 1.5 million metric tons of electronic scrap in 2008—is improved protection of the environment. “The collection, storage, transportation, treatment and disposal of all kinds of WEEE should be improved to prevent pollution, minimize emissions and maximize the recovery of secondary feedstock material,” said Secretary General Pascal Leroy of the WEEE Forum. He added that despite sustained efforts by most stakeholders, room for improvement remained.

To achieve its goals, the WEEE Forum began the WEEELABEX (WEEE Label of Excellence) project in 2009 to begin establishing a set of European standards relating to the collection, treatment, recovery and recycling of WEEE and to monitoring processing companies. The project, which has been approved by the European Commission and the EU’s member states, seeks to create a set of requirements based on legislation. However, it is more ambitious in the sense that its methodical and consistent requirement for documentation clearly goes beyond anything demanded by legislation.

The project aims to address a number of concerns and emerging realities. In the long run, the WEEE Forum says, the “WEEE Label of Excellence will create a visible distinction between those operators that meet the highest standards and those that do not.”

Speakers at IERC discussed two U.S. initiatives with the objective of establishing e-scrap processing standards. Responsible Recycling Practices for Use in Accredited Certification Programs for Electronics Recyclers, also known as R2, was developed under the authority of a multi-stakeholder brought together by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. R2 is a set of voluntary best practices for the electronics recycling industry. These guidelines are to be used by accredited certification bodies to audit the environmental and worker health/safety performance of electronics recyclers.

According to John Lingelbach of Decisions & Agreements, the U.S. company responsible for the execution of the R2 initiative, the project has been initiated because customers increasingly “insist on third-party certification to a performance-based standard that reflects their customers’ and shareholders’ values.”

A second initiative out of the U.S. is the E-Stewards third-party-audited certification program, developed by the nongovernmental organization Basel Action Network (BAN), Seattle. In Salzburg, BAN’s founder Jim Puckett called the program “the global solution for e-waste management.”

According to BAN, there is an obvious need for a global, mainstream, accredited, independently audited certification program assuring conformity to a practical but principled global standard which is consistent with international law and which would benefit both recyclers and OEMs.

E-stewardship is not limited to North America. Companies operating in an EU or OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) country can contact BAN to start the certification process.

The Ninth International Electronics Recycling Congress, organized by Swiss company ICM attracted a record attendance of more than 400 delegates from 33 countries. In addition, the event drew 34 exhibitors to the parallel trade show.