Last month, Minister László Borbély announced that the Ministry for the Environment has issued a draft law regarding the obligation of local public administration authorities to recycle at least 15% of the collected municipal and assimilable waste as of 1st July.
‘Those authorities who fail to reach this annual objective will pay 100 lei per metric ton. This payment shall be made for the difference between the annual reduction target and the quantity recycled in reality, and this will become compulsory as of 1st July 2010,’ declared Minister László Borbély, quoted by Mediafax.
The initiative regarding the reduction by 15% of the quantity of deposited municipal waste is in line with the provisions of the National Waste Management Strategy and the National Waste Management Plan, whose objectives include the reduction of the quantity of deposited household waste, as well as a higher level of recycling for this type of waste. The realities of everyday community life prove that the flow of household waste includes significant quantities of waste which, according to the norms, should be disposed of in a completely different manner. Classical examples are the defective fluorescent tube or broken small electrical appliances that go together with the household waste… directly into the dustbin! At the same time, one of the ways to reduce the volume of waste deposited at landfills is to avoid indiscriminate disposal of waste.
As far as WEEE is concerned, the new legal obligation will make local authorities focus on, among others, separate collection of small appliances, given that they are most likely to end up in the dustbin together with other household waste.
‘Given RoRec’s experience with waste electrical and electronic equipment collection and delivery for recycling, our role will be to offer concrete support to the local authorities,’ stated Mr. Liviu Popeneciu, president of the RoRec Association.
This legal norm can be successfully implemented only through large-scale selective collection, in order to avoid as much as possible that those types of waste that can be recycled, especially packaging materials and WEEE, enter the household waste flow. This particularly depends on two factors:
• Creating the infrastructure that is needed for selective collection (drop-off centres equipped with adequate containers);
• Information and awareness-raising activities meant to convince citizens to use this infrastructure.
According to a European Commission assessment, approximately 13% of all WEEE generated in Europe end up on landfills, because it is thrown away together with household waste, without any selection. A study by Witteveen & Bos shows almost the same level of disposal by landfill depositing in the Netherlands (11% of the total).
WEEE Forum recognised the importance of extracting waste small electrical and electronic equipment from the household waste flow, and launched an internal project for the exchange of specific best practice information, as well as a study regarding citizens’ behaviour and the way it may be influenced in order to increase the quantity of small waste electrical and electronic equipment that is collected selectively.