Voluntary certification scheme for waste treatment
Updated on 21.06.2024
The CEWASTE project contributes to an improved recovery of valuable and critical raw materials (CRMs) from key types of waste through traceable and sustainable treatment processes in the entire supply chain of secondary raw materials. As such, CEWASTE worked on addressing the specific challenge to secure the sustainable access to CRMs for the EU economy and objectives set by the EU action plan for the Circular Economy, the issue of illegal trade of wastes within the EU and to non-EU countries and the need to support the development of environmentally and socially sound recycling systems globally. Specifically, the project developed and validated a voluntary certification scheme for collection, transport and treatment facilities of key types of waste containing significant amounts of valuable and critical raw materials.
Relevance for Circular Systemic Solutions
The voluntary certification scheme this project offers can help actors in cities and regions creating CSSs in circular resource management, such as collection, transport and treatment facilities of (mostly electronic) waste containing significant amounts of valuable and critical raw materials. This can be especially helpful with monitoring in the Implement phase of CSS deployment. Widespread usage of such a scheme could allow better analisys of the metabolism of the territory in the Mapping phase, as well as with defining targets and indicators at the Design phase.
Main results and lessons learnt
The project produced a number of relevant and useful outputs, including:
- Traceability requirements
- Design of the assurance system
- Verification and certification procedures
- Mapping of stakeholders and clustering
- Assurance and verification manuals
Regarding lessons learned, CEWASTE recommends that:
- Legislation should require recovery of specific CRMs.
- Supplementary market incentives should stimulate, as much as possible, the use of secondary CRMs in new products.
- Financial or fiscal incentives should be used to spur the economic viability of recovering CRMs and using secondary CRMs.
- Platforms where demand for recycled components, materials and CRMs meets supply should be promoted.
- Actors involved in the collection of e-waste should raise awareness of the importance of recycling of CRMs.
- Producer Responsibility Organizations (PROs) should consider consolidating fractions of CRM rich products in adequate quantities (“clustering”) to make recycling attractive.
- Actors in the value chain should be in the position to access information on the CRM rich components, thereby making monitoring of actual recycling of CRMs easier.
- The relevant authorities should do a better job at enforcing rules around transboundary shipment of CRM-rich fractions outside the EU and the respect of technical standards along the value chain.
- The CEWASTE normative requirements must be integrated into the EN 50625 series and the whole set must be made legally binding.
- The sector needs more targeted investments in research and development of new technologies.
More of the project's results can be found on: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/820859/results
Horizon programme and topic
Programme:
- H2020-EU.3.5. - SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Climate action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials
Topic:
- CE-SC5-08-2018-2019-2020 - Raw materials policy support actions for the circular economy
Responsible organisation and contact details
Project consortium partners
- WORLD RESOURCES FORUM ASSOCIATION
- OEKO-INSTITUT E.V. - INSTITUT FUER ANGEWANDTE OEKOLOGIE
- SOFIES SA
- UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSITY
- WASTE OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICAL EQUIPMENT FORUM AISBL
- AUSTRIAN STANDARDS INTERNATIONAL -STANDARDISIERUNG UND INNOVATION
- EUROPEAN ELECTRONICS RECYCLERS ASSOCIATION
- ENVIRONMENTAL COALITION ON STANDARDS
- SGS FIMKO OY
digital tools facilitating CE transition
e.g. chemicals, cosmetics, bio-based industries
e.g. electrical engineering, furniture and interior, textile and fashion
<5 000
large 500 000-200 000, medium 200 000-50 000, and small cities 50 000-5 000
large metropolitan area >1.5 million, metropolitan area 1.5 million-500 000
predominantly urban regions, intermediate and predominantly rural regions, refer to TERCET typology NUTS 3 region
e.g. commercial, residential, service, industrial
