Europe to revise WEEE e-waste regulations for a Circular Economy Act
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The European Commission is to revise the long-standing Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive as it prepares a new Circular Economy Act.
WEEE is critical to address the growing challenges in e-waste management, but has been seen as an overhead for electronics equipment manufacturers. The commission is planning a consultation on the regulations that will guide the development of the Act for launch in 2026.
New rules to improve recycling efficiency and material recovery from waste batteries also will be published in the next days.
Recent work has identified key gaps were identified, such as the fact that nearly 50% of all e-waste remains uncollected, and recycling falls short of collection targets in EU Member States. The evaluation highlighted the need for a new approach to improve collection, treatment, and market incentives.
The evaluation found that in 2022, only Bulgaria, Latvia, and Slovakia met the 65% collection target of WEEE, based on the amount placed on the market in the previous three years. Economic factors, illegal trade, lack of infrastructure, and low public awareness were barriers to reaching the collection target. There were also differing interpretations and calculation methods.
Low collection of e-waste is a lost opportunity to recover valuable materials, in particular critical raw materials such as copper, rare earth elements, gallium, germanium or tungsten. Additionally, the current recycling targets in the Directive did not effectively encourage the recovery of secondary raw materials. Only about 23% of recycling facilities in the EU implement high-quality treatment standards. Improving the quality of recycling could help retrieve greater volumes of valuable secondary raw materials.
The evaluation also found fragmented implementation of take-back schemes across the EU and gaps in the enforcement of EPR obligations, particularly concerning online sellers.
As we detail in our circularity feature today with contributions from key players across the industry, electronic waste is one of Europe’s fastest-growing waste streams, increasing by about 2% annually. There is a lot of potential to better make use of e-waste, for example by recovering and recycling critical raw materials and strengthening the circular economy.
This is one of several initiatives to accelerate the EU’s transition to a circular economy, including new rules on the shipment of waste. The Circular Economy Act will support the EU’s goals under the Competitiveness Compass and the Clean Industrial Deal to double the share of recycled material in EU’s economy and become a global leader in circular economy by 2030.
The WEEE evaluation is at eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:02012L0019-20180704
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