How should we deal with the interfaces between chemicals, product and waste legislation?

Abstract

Background: In the 7th Environment Action Programme, the European Commission targets two essential goals in the handling of substances and materials known by the buzzwords "non-toxic environment" and "circular economy". There are numerous interfaces in product, waste and chemicals legislation in these two areas. This leads to conflicting objectives, e.g. with regard to the classification of waste in analogy to chemicals as well as at the border between waste and secondary raw materials that are further processed into products. Results:We investigate how these conflicting objectives can be mitigated or resolved. In our view, it is necessary to provide operators in the waste management sector with considerably more information on the composition of used products than before; this should include not only hazardous substances but also materials that interfere with the recycling process as well as recyclable or valuable materials. Waste management legislation largely follows risk considerations-a 1:1 transfer of hazard classifications of chemicals and products to waste management would be counterproductive to achieving the Commission's objectives. In the case of contaminated secondary raw materials, their input into products can be justified in specific cases. However, this requires a risk assessment that includes in particular physicochemical factors, patterns of utilisation and controlled collection routes. Internationally recognised lists of secondary materials are an important condition for determining end-of-waste status and thus for increasing material recycling. Conclusions:A common guiding principle for chemicals policy and waste management is urgently needed. © The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Coherence in law: A way to stimulate the transition towards a circular economy? A critical analysis of the European Commission's aspiration to achieve full coherence between chemicals legislation and waste legislation – and product legislation

“…184 As already briefly mentioned in the previous section, a possibility to solve the lack of information about the presence of (hazardous) substances in materials and products can, for example, consist of creating a legal obligation by means of which the information needs of the waste sector can be fulfilled or of reshaping the current information systems. Possibilities that can be mentioned in this regard are inter alia the use of tracking technologies, 185 enlarging the scope of the existing ECHA database, the publishing of Safety Data Sheets (SDS) online 186 or the replacement of SDSs with a new information system, such as a materials/product-passport kind of system. 187 A possibility to tackle the issue concerning the end-of-waste rules could for instance be the development of more EU end-of-waste criteria, as well as by-product criteria.…”

“…Also, the transition to a circular economy is said to be the EU synonym for the development towards 'Sustainable Materials Management'. 10,11 The EU has already taken several steps related to EU legislation to stimulate the transition towards a CE, such as the recent amendment of the Waste Framework Directive (WFD). 12 However, in literature and in EU policy documents it is reflected that multiple situations can be identified where the reuse or recycling of materials and products is hampered by legislation or where there are unexploited opportunities to enhance the transition towards a CE in the EU through legal measures.…”

Optimization of Vehicle Routing for Waste Collection and Transportation

“…For each particle, update velocity according to Equation (25), and when velocity exceeds the range, take the value according to the boundary as shown by Equation (26).…”

“…Due to the increasing amount of waste and the increasing difficulty of SWM, many areas have established laws on waste collection and transportation, including all kinds of waste such as hazardous waste [ 25 ], chemical waste [ 26 ], E-waste [ 27 ], roundwood waste [ 28 ], construction waste [ 29 ], and so on. In particular, there has been an increase in laws and regulations on hazardous waste and E-waste collection [ 30 , 31 ] over the past two decades, for their particularity and harmfulness.…”

Long Term Exposure to Virgin and Recycled LDPE Microplastics Induced Minor Effects in the Freshwater and Terrestrial Crustaceans Daphnia magna and Porcellio scaber

“…Recycled plastics contain a multitude of (un)intentionally added chemical additives/contaminants (e.g. pesticide residues, pigments, flame retardants) [ 18 , 19 ] identification of which alone is challenging [ 20 ] and establishing polymer-based toxicological signature more so [ 21 ].…”