European Union

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you today on behalf of the European Union to the 4th EU-India Environment Forum, which this year will address the challenge of Electronic Waste.

The ongoing technological innovation, in particular the digital revolution, and the rapidly changing preferences of consumers in both India and the European Union, have not only led to an increasing production but also an increasing pace of replacement of electronic products such as mobile phones, PCs, TV sets, household appliances, etc. This in turn, is leading to the generation of electrical and electronical equipment waste - E-waste in short.

E-waste is very complex to handle, and often contains highly toxic chemicals such as lead, cadmium, mercury, beryllium, Brominated Flame Retardants (BFRs), PVC and phosphorus compounds. These materials have serious human health concerns and require extreme care in their disposal at the downstream to avoid any adverse impacts.

In Europe, e-waste is one of the fastest growing waste streams. Today, the volume is about 9 million tonnes per year. The expectation is that without additional measures, this will rise to 12 million tonnes in 2020.

The European Union has about 10 years of experience of development and implementation of its e-waste policy and legislation. European experts will inform the meeting today about this journey and I will of course not try to steal their thunder.

But I would like to stress, in particular for our Indian participants, that while the EU has come a long way in improving its e-waste management, including diverse and sophisticated systems of extended producer responsibility, collection, recycling and financing in its 27 Member States, the results are not as we expected. Currently about one-third of all discarded equipment is properly recorded to be separately collected, treated and recycled but full documentation on the remaining two thirds is still to be achieved. Particularly small equipment still tends to end up in the normal municipal waste.

The EU experience also shows that the varied forms of implementation in the EU Member States can create significant complexity and are even perceived by some stakeholder as market barriers. System complexity is a great risk in e-waste management. Hence, currently, the EU policy and legislation is under review.

One of the features of the e-waste situation in India which finds no comparison in the EU is the very broad involvement of the informal sector. E-waste collection, transportation, processing and recycling is very much dominated by this sector and to a large extent happen in an uncontrolled way. Most of the e-waste in India is indeed recycled by the informal sector but often not all resources are recovered, such as precious and scarce metals like Palladium and Cobalt. In addition, there are serious issues regarding leakage of toxics into the environment and worker’s safety and health.

I am sure that this issue will be discussed today, but it seems to me, that which ever way India will further develop its e-waste management system, the informal sector has to be part of the solution.

Ladies and gentlemen,

E-waste management cannot be just a responsibility of the government. Market players should take a major responsibility in this respect. In our view, producers are responsible for e-waste management (as part of Extended Producer Responsibility), where consumers, retailers, central and state governments, municipalities, and other parties (e.g. libraries and post offices) should all play an appropriate role in collection, facilitation and creation of the infrastructure to make e-waste management a success. This is especially the case for collection, which is often the bottleneck for successful e-waste management.

I am happy to see that later this morning there will be a panel discussion between representatives from the producing industry and the dismantling and the recycling industries. This interaction between the suppliers and the end of life users so to speak, is very important – it is only when there is a feedback loop between these parts of the chain that product designs can be adjusted to make sure that when the products reach the end of their economic life, they can be easily and safely dismantled, and scarce resources can be put back in the production cycle and do not end up in landfills.   

When I speak about the role of government, I do not just mean the regulatory aspects, but also its role as a consumer! In the EU, public authorities' spending accounts for around 16% of the EU's gross domestic product. And I guess this share is not less in India. Therefore, also as consumer, government agencies have a role to play in the purchasing of environment friendly products and services via so called Green Public Procurement and the responsible discarding of end of life products. This government purchasing power could also, where needed, put pressure on companies to produce more sustainable products from the point of view of resources efficiency and the potential for re-use and recycling of products and components. 

In February this year, the EU Action Plan Support Facility team organized a successful workshop on e-waste here in Delhi. I am very happy to see that today copies of the Policy Brief of that meeting as well as the Report on 'Sharing best practices and lessons learned between the EU and India' which was triggered by this workshop are now available at this Forum.

Let me conclude by underlining that participants from the EU do not pretend to know or to show the best way forward. As you have understood from my presentation there are certain successes in the EU but we are also learning by doing.  India is also trying to find its way at the Center, at state level and through other stakeholders. Therefore, we should both consider this meeting today as a great opportunity to share experiences and learn from each other.

Thank you for your attention.