EUROFER psition on the Revision of the Waste Framework Directive

EUROFER Position Paper on the Revision of the Waste Framework Directive

EUROFER, the European Confederation of Iron and Steel Industries, would like to make some concrete proposals on certain aspects aiming at improving the legal waste framework in view of the second reading of the Waste Framework Directive.

Our proposals can be summarised as follows:

• EUROFER asks for a certain flexibility to deviate from the established waste management hierarchy as established by the Council in the common position which does not cause unnecessary administrative burden or high-cost/time consuming procedures such as life cycle assessments.
• EUROFER supports the inclusion of an unambiguous “material to material” definition of recycling into the Waste Framework Directive as proposed by the European Parliament.
• EUROFER supports the inclusion of a definition of by-products into the Waste Framework Directive that allows distinguishing them unambiguously from waste and calls for the text of the Council common position to be confirmed.

• The definition of recovery should be based on the principle of using a waste as a substitute for other resources. Therefore we ask for a reinforcement of this principle in the text of the common position.

• EUROFER welcomes the introduction of an article allowing determining the end of waste status and supports the text of the Council common position. However, overlap of regulations must be avoided in order to prevent confusion, unnecessary complexity and counter-productive requirements that harm rather than protect the environment or health. The definition of prevention or certain criteria for end of waste clearly interfere with existing EU legislation.

Hereafter EUROFER provides with detailed argumentation on each topic mentioned above.

Waste Hierarchy

EUROFER believes that regardless of how many steps the waste hierarchy has it should be conceived as a guiding principle, not a strict rule and that it needs to be realistic and workable. Procedures requiring justification by complex and expensive life-cycle analyses in all cases should not be prescribed in the Directive.

Therefore EUROFER calls on the EP to confirm the text of the Council common position.

Definition of By-products

The current legal uncertainties concerning the status of by-products result in an unequal treatment of economic operators across the EU and can hinder the efficient use of by-products instead of natural resources, if economically useful products are wrongly classified as waste.

Whereas the guidelines proposed by the Commission may be of certain use as complementary interpretative tool, the required legal certainty for by-products can only be provided by the EU legislator under the WFD. Furthermore, with this scenario decisions will be taken by individual Member States case by case, instead of having a common legally binding EU framework.

EUROFER welcomes the inclusion of a definition of by-products into the Waste Framework Directive that allows distinguishing them unambiguously from waste. In this respect, both the Parliament and the Council have adopted an Article with a list of clear criteria sufficient to clearly distinguish by-products from waste. However, the EP text establishes burdensome rules without any additional benefit to the environment.

EUROFER supports the inclusion of a definition of by-products and calls for the text of the Council common position to be maintained. However, in order to prevent different interpretations amongst MSs we would like to ask you to support the following change:

“A substance or object, resulting from a production process, the primary aim of which is not the production of that item, mayshall be regarded as not being waste referred to in point (1) of Article 3 but as being a by-product only if the following conditions are met (…)”

Definition of Recycling

The steel industry is one of the most important recycling sectors (500 million tons of scrap yearly worldwide); therefore EUROFER wants to protect the integrity of the concept of recycling and considers of outmost importance the adoption of a recycling definition, not only for our sector but also for the achievement of the recycling society that the Commission is seeking.

The definition should unambiguously be material-based meaning that a material remains available to undertake a new cycle giving birth to a new material. (steel to steel, paper to paper, plastic to plastic, etc.) aiming to allow materials to be reintroduced into a manufacturing route leading to their production.

The definition adopted by the Parliament protects the integrity of the concept of recycling:

EUROFER fully supports the inclusion of a “material to material” definition of recycling and calls on the EP to reincorporate the recycling definition as adopted in first reading, thereby rejecting the text of the common position or alternatively to amend the common position text in the following way:

Definition of Recovery

The European Steel Industry supports the inclusion of a definition of recovery in the Directive. The definition should be based in the principle of using a waste as a substitution for other resources. We also believe that referring to the “principal result” of an operation would lead to legal uncertainty.

For all these reasons we call on the EP to support the following amended text:

Definition of Prevention

The definition of prevention adopted by the Parliament refers to the “reduction of the harmfulness through restrictions on the use in products of substances or materials that are hazardous”.

In the same way, the definition in the Council text refers to “reduce the content of harmful substances in materials and products…“.

It is not always technically feasible or appropriate to reduce the content of some substances in a product, since such changes may alter the intrinsic properties of the product in a way that prevents it from fulfilling its design function. Some products have completely different properties from their constituent substances (e.g. special preparations as such alloys).

REACH is the appropriate legislative instrument to assess whether there is a risk associated with the presence of a hazardous substance in a product and taking into consideration its full life cycle.

Overlap of regulations must be avoided in order to prevent confusion, unnecessary complexity and counter-productive requirements that harm rather than protect the environment or health. We also consider that the term "hazardous" is more appropriate than the term “harmful” since that is the generic word used in the EU legislation regarding dangerous substances and preparations.

Therefore EUROFER calls on the EP to support the text of the common position, improving its wording in the following way:

“iii) the content of harmfulhazardoussubstances in material and products when required by other relevant EU legislation on materials, products or substances”

End of waste

The steel industry understands that, in some cases limit values for pollutants might be necessary for materials that have been through a waste phase. However, this should be based on a risk assessment. If existing legislation already guarantees that such a risk is under control there is no need for additional limit values.

Moreover, care must be taken not to introduce distortion of competition between materials, including competition between primary materials and secondary materials. There is a need for a level playing field in order to boost the sustainable use of resources. Only the additional risk for the environment needs to be the base for such limit values.

This means that:

- priority must be given to the impact (emissions) on the environment (risk) and not to the composition

- there is no reason to set limit values for a secondary material if its use does not bring additional risk for the environment when compared to the primary material it might substitute.

Additionally, EUROFER thinks the end of waste and the completion of the recycling operation need to be decoupled. Scrap is a good example. End of life products are dismantled and the different materials are sorted leading for instance to processed scrap. Sorting is the key operation whereby the society shows interest for the material and confirms that one does not want to discard it. At that stage it is already a secondary material but it has not been fully recycled yet. The completion of the recycling operation occurs when those metals are used by the steel industry in order to manufacture ingots, sheets or coils of steel.

While EUROFER fully supports Article 5.1, 5.2 and 5.4 of the common position, Article 5.3 should not be included in the final Directive. In addition, we encourage the EP to reconsider including a clarification in Article 5.1 aiming to avoid introducing distortion of competition between primary and secondary materials. EUROFER also calls on the EP to reject Recital 21 of the common position.