ETIRA and UBA Discuss Empties under WEEE Directive

As was reported by The Recycler, representatives from European Toner and Inkjet Remanufacturers Association (ETIRA) and German regulator Umwdt Bunddes Amt (UBA) met at a meeting, to discuss whether empties should be included under the new Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive (WEEE-2).

According to www.conformance.co.uk, the WEEE Directive aims at reducing the amount of waste electrical and electronic equipment that ends up in landfill. Basically it creates mechanisms for consumers to put their WEEE into a waste stream that will be collected separately from other waste, taken to a reprocessing facility, processed and logged and all accounted for by a responsible third party so the cost of it all can be fairly apportioned to producers. The WEEE-2 released in mid 2013 includes all empty cartridges in its categories.

It was stated ETIRA wrote a letter to UBA in October 2013 and objected UBA’s decision to include all empty cartridges under the new directive, which will be carried out in Germany for a five-year review period. So now the two parties met together and discussed the matter.

ETIRA opined that including empties under the new directive will disobey EU law, and many more empties will be ended in landfills as “many local authorities have no capacity to separately collect all empty cartridges during the printer’s life cycle”. Consequently, there will not be sufficient empties for remanufacturers and it is bad for environment.

Finally, ETIRA and UBA agreed that empties may be reclassified, or work together to enable enough empties for remanufacturers if empties are included under the new directive.