Annual Report - Sens

Leadership:
setting standards
The WEEE Forum, the European Association of Electrical and Electronic Waste Take
Back Systems, is participating in a four-year project aimed at defining the quality standard
for recycling these appliances. SENS is actively involved in this important project.
The WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Directive
is the European directive on the environmentally friendly recycling
of the ever-increasing volume of electrical and electronic
scrap. The WEEE Forum unites 41 European take-back and
recycling systems for electrical and electronic appliances, which
implement the WEEE Directive by taking account of ‘producer
responsibility’ on the part of the manufacturers and importers
in their respective countries. SENS has been a member of this
association since it was founded and the SENS President has
been President of the WEEE Forum for four years.
WEEELABEX: the European standard for the recycling of
electrical and electronic appliances
WEEELABEX stands for WEEE LABel of EXcellence and is
partly financed by the EU (LIFE plus), which contributes 50 per
cent. For three years now the members of the WEEE Forum
have been working hard in various working groups to define
a European standard for the recycling of electrical and electronic
appliances. Now we are at last within reach of our goal:
by the end of 2012 the project will have been completed and
the organisation in charge of implementing the directive established
and operational. The intention is to transfer WEEELABEX
as the standard to CENELEC, the European Committee for
Electrotechnical Standardisation, with the aim of formulating a
European (EN) standard from this, which will in the end be
bin ding on all EU countries. Harmonising the recycling standards
in this way will make a vital contribution to ensuring that
the same requirements for the recycling of electrical and electronic
appliances will apply within Europe, creating in turn a
level playing field within the recycling industry.
More market transparency, more efficient processes
What are the advantages of a European standard for the Swiss
recycling industry? It produces far-reaching synergies, not
only within Europe, but also between Europe and Switzerland.
Standardisation ensures more market transparency in all the
countries involved. Moreover, the Swiss take-back systems
will benefit from the fact that the auditing processes can be
structured and implemented just as before to a great extent.
Quality
Consequently, the Bundesamt für Umwelt (BAFU – Swiss
Federal Office for the Environment, FOEN) will take account of
the WEEELABEX when implementing the revision of the VREG:
for example with regard to the way the appliance categories
are structured or when incorporating the Technical Rules into
national legislation or defining the latest technologies. The
success of the quality standards we have produced jointly
demonstrates that in today’s global context even relatively
small take-back systems such as SENS can make a vital contribution
to ensuring a visionary course in future.
The next step involves identifying the conditions needed to
implement the standards easily and regulate them efficiently in
the different countries. This includes defining and implemen ting
the auditing guidelines and training the auditors appropriately.
Creating organisational structures that will guarantee the neutrality
and independence of the commissioned auditors is indeed
important. Last but not least, the members of the WEEE Forum
will need to address the issue as to whether a standard defined
in this way for Europe could also be applied globally and
so create clear, uniform processes throughout the world.
Specialist report for download
The 2011 specialist report by the technical auditors, TK-SENS
and TK-SWICO, will be available for download at no charge from
� www.sens.ch from mid-2012.
SENS Annual Report 2011 27