Recyclers set out priorities for EU WEEE

Recycling Europe (RE) has unveiled a new roadmap to chart a course towards greater circularity in Europe’s e-waste sector.

As electrical and electronic waste continues to grow across the EU, the umbrella organisation previously known as EuRIC has set out six priority actions to boost WEEE recycling in the EU.

Only around 40% of WEEE is currently reported as recycled, with plastics recycling rates as low as 20%, RE points out. It notes that collection levels remain far below the EU’s 65% target, resulting in the loss of valuable materials and undermining Europe’s circular economy.
‘Recyclers also face low demand for recycled materials, slow implementation of eco-design rules, safety risks and financial uncertainties linked to lithium batteries, and regulatory and trade barriers that limit efficient recycling across the single market,’ RE adds.

List of priorities

The roadmap’s six priorities are improving e-waste collection, enabling free and fair intra-EU trade, strengthening eco-design and the digital product passport, removing market and regulatory barriers, ensuring effective and transparent extended producer responsibility schemes, and future-proofing the recycling sector.
‘Europe is losing valuable materials to poor e-waste collection and weak markets,’ says policy director Maria Vera Duran. ‘Our roadmap shows how urgent policy action can deliver a competitive, safe and truly circular e-waste sector.’

RE is urging EU policymakers and Member States to use the upcoming revision of the WEEE Directive, the Circular Economy Act and related legislation to create the conditions for ‘a strong, competitive, safe and truly circular e-waste recycling sector in Europe’.