Ref. Ares(2020)639871 - 01/02/
Ref. Ares(2022)110688 - 07/01/2022 2020
To:
SADAUSKAS Kestutis (ENV);
(ENV);
(ENV);
(ENV);
(ENV);
(ENV);
(ENV)
Cc:
(ENV);
(ENV)
Subject:
Flash Report - meeting VKU on EPR (SUP), 29 January 2020 (DG ENV)
Attachments:
INFA_presentation_Brussels.pdf
Flash Report -
meeting with VKU on Extended Producer Responsibility under the SUP Directive, costs of
public waste collection and litter clean-up;
Participants: COM (DG ENV, B3):
,
,
,
;
VKU:
,
;
INFA:
;
On the 29 January 2020, DG ENV (B.3) met with VKU, an organisation of municipal waste enterprises in
Germany, to discuss the issue of
Extended Producer Responsibility (‘EPR’) under the SUP Directive to
cover costs of public waste collection and litter clean up. The Commission, supported by an external
contractor (IEEP, in the context of the SUP support study) is preparing guidelines for the establishment
of EPR schemes under the Directive (Art. 8). VKU has commissioned a study to develop a methodology
to determine the costs of collecting waste from public collection systems and cleaning up operations in
municipalities (developed by INFA - waste and waste management institute).
INFA presented the preliminary findings of their study (see attached presentation). In particular, they
seek confirmation from COM that the proposed methodology of establishing the costs of litter clean-up
is in line with what the COM will propose in the future guidelines. COM explained that under the SUP
support study, the contractor has only just finalised the analysis of the responses to the stakeholder
survey and has not yet come forward with any concrete options for a methodology of costs
calculation/allocation. Therefore, the elements proposed by INFA/VKU provide valuable input to this
work (relevant parameters/indicators that impact on costs, weight/volume approach, cost units, etc),
and would also be worth presenting/discussing in the next
stakeholder workshop on the 25 February
on EPR-SUP (WP 6). INFA/VKU confirmed their willingness to participate in the workshop and present
their draft methodology. COM also noted that a number of elements were still missing, which would
also have to be addressed in the future Guidelines, in particular:
-
Data from litter clean-up activities in rural/coastal areas, in particular beach clean-up and forest
cleaning;
-
Costs of awareness-raising campaigns, data gathering and reporting (the latter also applicable to
wet wipes, balloons and tobacco products with filters, products currently not covered by
existing EPR schemes).
COM also presented the current state of play of its
draft Guidance for EPR schemes under the WFD (and relevant for EPR under PPWD, WEEE and Batteries), in particular as regards determining the
‘
necessary costs’. THE SUP-EPR guidelines should as much as possible build on this Guidance, which is
expected to be adopted this spring. VKU informed COM that the intention in DE is to incorporate the
new SUP obligations on cost coverage (litter clean up, waste collection), and to apply these to all
packaging (not only those SUP items listed in the SUP Directive), based on article 8(1)(b) as well as
invoking the environment legal basis of the SUP Directive.
It was agreed to continue the discussion in the SUP-EPR Workshop on the 25th of February and connect
with the contractor of the SUP support study to provide relevant feedback on the methodology. VKU
also agreed to send COM a
legal study on producer responsibility for cigarette buds and the
Saxony
guidelines on waste analysis (
Richtlinie zur einheitlichen Abfallanalytik in Sachsen).
European Commission
Directorate-General for Environment
B3 - Waste Management & Secondary Materials
Avenue de Beaulieu 9 – 5/
B-1049 Brussels/Belgium
Tel : +32
@ec.europa.eu
Website: http://ec.europa.eu/environment
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