Stop hoarding e-waste

News from Landbell Group

On 17 January 2024, ERP Ireland , working together with the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications and other stakeholders, launched a national awareness campaign urging householders to make recycling of electrical waste a new year resolution for 2024.

The “Recycle your Electrical Waste for Free!” campaign informs and educates people on what items can be recycled and the civic amenity sites and electrical retailers where they can take them.

Independent research house, iReach undertook consumer research, comprising 1,000 respondents, which demonstrated that 84% of Irish householders are hoarding broken or unused electrical items at home.

Read the full story here.

Environmental compliance

After the Council of the European Union adopted its position on the new packaging and packaging waste regulation (PPWR) just before Christmas, the inter-institutional negotiations between the Council, the European Parliament and the European Commission started on 10 January. The aim is to finalise the negotiations in time for the European elections in June.

The negotiating positions of the three institutions differ mainly on the following points:

?? Packaging recyclability obligations

?? Minimum recycled content requirements

?? Reuse and refill targets

?? Packaging waste reduction targets, and

?? Labelling of packaging

However, there is alignment on issues such as the avoidance of lightweight plastic carrier bags, recycling targets and requirements for awareness raising campaigns.

To learn more details, go to the full article, where you’ll also find other news:

?? Single-Use Plastics Directive: implementing Act for calculating recycled plastic content

?? Ecodesign Regulation: Council and Parliament find agreement

?? Plastic levy: introduction in Germany for companies

Circular economy

Two member states, Romania and Hungary, have introduced deposit return schemes (DRS) for single-use bottles on 01 December 2023 and 01 January 2024 respectively. This makes the two countries part of a group of 13 EU states that now operate related DRS.

According to the operators, Romania’s system will be one of the most comprehensive and complexly integrated DRS in the world. The system is operated by a consortium of private companies and the Romanian government, and is expected to handle up to seven billion beverage bottles per year. The system covers bottles with a capacity of 0.1 to 3 litres and costs the consumer 0.5 Romanian lei per bottle (equivalent to approximately 0.10 euros).

Read the full article to learn more.

For more articles on what's happening in the world of EPR and the circular economy, go to February’s COMPASS.

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