GARWER WasteXchange News

Sharp increase in European waste trade Posted: 05 Mar 2008 04:33 PM CST Cross-border shipments of waste from EU countries have "increased significantly" in the last decade, according to a report published on Monday by researchers at the European topic centre on resource and waste management. The report shows that transfers of "hazardous and problematic" waste from EU15 countries increased threefold between 1997 and 2003 to 8.3m tonnes. Data for the EU25 reveals that shipments of such waste increased by over a third between 2001 and 2003. A similar increase in cross-border shipments is evident for trade in non-hazardous waste, researchers say. Most striking is a six-fold increase in transfers of non-hazardous waste to countries outside the EU, rising from 1.2m tonnes in 1995 to 7.8m tonnes in 2005. Rising global prices for secondary raw materials such as waste paper, plastic and metal have driven the increase in shipments, most notably to Asia. Cases of illegal waste shipments increased between 2001 and 2005, and despite the incomplete nature of data on such shipments, researchers say "illegal shipments are considerable". An EU inspection exercise in 2005 found that up to half of all shipments were illegal, but critics have dismissed the statistic as "misleading" (EED 08/11/05 and EED 17/01/08). An action plan is currently being drawn up by the commission's environment department to improve the implementation of EU waste shipment legislation (EED 18/02/08). Commission officials have publicly stated that the plan could propose non-binding criteria for inspections of waste shipments by member state authorities. The report contains strong criticism of the quality of EU reporting data on waste shipments. Researchers argue data reporting requirements should be expanded to include waste codes from the European waste list, as the Basel Convention codes currently being used are "too general". Such a change would make it possible to "evaluate both the environmental and economic consequences of the shipments", they concludes. [b]Follow-up[/b]: [url=http://waste.eionet.europa.eu/]European topic centre on resource and waste management[/url] | [url=http://waste.eionet.europa.eu/announcements/ann1204546983]press release[/url] | [url=http://eea.eionet.europa.eu/Public/irc/eionet-circle/etc_waste/library?l=/working_papers/shipments290208pdf/_EN_1.0_&a=d]report[/url]

Czech Republic to revise waste legislation Posted: 05 Mar 2008 02:20 PM CST The Czech government is to make "extensive" changes to waste legislation, environment minister Martin Bursik has said last week. Changes are intended to "give recycling an economic advantage over incineration and, in particular, landfilling", he said. The government proposes measures to improve take-back systems for batteries and electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), and to increase recycling rates for scrap cars. Under EU law member states must recycle 85 per cent of end-of-life vehicles by 2015. A consultation on the proposals is open until the end of March. [url=http://www.env.cz/AIS/web-news-en.nsf/9ab6596b5dac8075c1256662002b0723/2e5c0455f45623cec12573fe00469cb2?OpenDocument]See press release[/url].

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