The Waste Land: Romania disposed to meet EU recycling norms

Europe’s need to deal with the resources in its own back yard in a responsible way has become a pressing issue. Many are increasingly hard to find, lying outside European borders. Meanwhile, EU member states have to meet strict recycling targets. How is Romania doing? Unfortunately, not very well. BR presents the first in a series of articles to shed more light on this business of the future.

Otilia Haraga

“As consumers, we have bought into quick replacement, which means the life cycle of electronic equipment has dwindled. European producers are under pressure to make new equipment because of consumers, but this also means high consumption of resources. How can we quench consumers’ thirst for the new while also managing the resources this requires? This seemed hard a while ago but today it can be done,” Liviu Popeneciu, president of the RoRec Associations, tells BR.

Resources are running out, so the only way to get more is via recycling. Not to mention the political pressure generated by the lack of resources within European borders. “The attitude of the European Commission and European Parliament means that economic activities are being steered in such a way that by 2020 Europe will have become a society of recycling,” says Popeneciu.

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Of the overall waste generated by a community, household trash represents more than 80 percent. Next comes solid waste such as construction debris which accounts for 7-8 percent. Then it is toxic waste such as oils and paints, at 3-4 percent. Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) makes up 5 percent at most of the total quantity generated by a community. However, the European trend is to recycle as much WEEE as possible.

So, why the big fuss about only 5 percent? There are three main reasons. One is that WEEE contains highly polluting substances. Secondly, some of these ingredients can be recovered and reused in new equipment. Thirdly, a law at EU level, also applicable in Romania, very clearly stipulates the do’s and don’ts when it comes to ‘getting rid’ of old equipment.

The WEEE treatment process results in two types of fractions. Some are dangerous for the environment such as Freon, mercury and fluorescent powder which can also contain mercury, plus glass with a high amount of lead. There are also fractions with a positive worth, which go into the category of secondary raw materials, such as ferrous and non-ferrous materials, plastic materials and so on. The dangerous fractions are sent to be neutralized either in Romania or the wider EU. As for the positive fractions, they can end up in Romania or outside its borders at the producers of raw materials for industry, where they are re-introduced into the economic circuit.

“The advantage of using secondary raw materials is the major cost savings for producers,” says Marius Costache, general manager of GreenWEEE International.

EU Directive 96, which came into force on August 13, 2005, applied to all the member states, at that time 25. When Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU on January 1, 2007, they ‘inherited’ this law as well. The directive has been under revision for some time and the new European directive that regulates WEEE should come out this year.

“Currently, there are still discussions about collection and recycling targets, but one thing is for sure: the intention is to grow collection targets and reintroduce secondary raw materials, which result from recycling, into new products. Natural resources, as we know very well, are limited and Europe in particular does not have them in its own territory. What this new directive means to achieve is higher independence for producers of new equipment by reusing secondary raw materials. There’s even a concept to define this, urban mining,” says Costache.

Directive 96’s collection target for each member state is 4 kilograms of WEEE per person, which in Romania means 84,000 tons annually.

While Western countries are coping very well with these demands, Eastern European countries are falling below the target. Romania is one of the laggards. “In 2009, the peak year of WEEE collection in Romania, the not-yet-final figure released by the National Agency of Environment Protection is 35,000 tons. As practitioners in this field, we have reason to believe it was not more than 30,000 real tons, the remaining quantity being in fact only on paper. If we relate this quantity to a population of 21 million Romanians, we are talking about 1.4 kilograms per capita,” says Popeneciu. It gets worse. “In 2010, our estimations are that the total quantity of collected WEEE is 25,000 tons, which means 1.25 kilograms per capita,” he continues.

What does this mean? “Romania did not manage to collect in three years what should be the collection target for one single year,” says Costache. It also means that Romania is running on borrowed time since failure to meet targets constitutes an infringement. “As a member state, Romania has certain targets and obligations to the EU and not attaining them will incur penalties. These can reach as much as EUR 200,000 a day,’ he adds.

One of the major causes of this failure to collect is also the parallel flow of waste.

“Annually, very large quantities of WEEE are lost in other fluxes of waste such as scrap iron, and household waste dumps. Unofficial figures show that more than 30,000 tons of WEEE are lost in this way each year, which means nearly half of Romania’s annual target,” says Costache. Getting rid of your WEEE waste at the dump or giving it away for scrap iron is, of course illegal, but few Romanians know that. In other European countries, disposing of your waste irresponsibly can earn you a fine and may also constitute a criminal offence. In Austria, for instance, it is punishable with a prison sentence, says Popeneciu. Not so in Romania.

This is bad for producers who have certain targets to meet. “Unfortunately, this violation of the law cannot be punished by applying the specific legislation, government decision 1037/2010, because there is no amendment in this sense. We are thus in the absurd situation in which, if we miss our waste target even by 1 percent (for example, attaining 79 percent instead of 80 percent), we can be punished with a fine of between RON 40,000 and 50,000 and the temporary suspension of activity. On the other hand, illegal waste dumping is very difficult to punish, possible only by invoking environmental protection legislation (government emergency ordinance 195/2005 approved through the Law 265/2006) with fines starting from RON 5,000 and with no consequences for continued activity,” complains Mioara Bolozan, marketing manager of Whirlpool Romania.

European Directive 96 does not only impose targets for WEEE collection. “The waste extraction target is 80 percent, which is still low, because technologies have evolved tremendously and it can now reach 92 percent. There are about 250-280 recyclers in Romania at the moment of which only three installations meet the criteria,” says Popeneciu.

The framework in Romania was begun even before the country was admitted into the EU. Government decision 448 in 2005 was adopted by the Tariceanu government, and remained unchanged until the fall of 2010. Now, the law stipulates that there should be WEEE collection infrastructure consisting of one center per every 50,000 inhabitants. 

The first such centers were built by RoRec in Tulcea and Valenii de Munte in the last two weeks. “We are very much insisting on partnerships with city halls for the construction and administration of a national network of collection centers. These will not be opened at random, but taking into account criteria such as the public’s capacity to generate waste, access roads, thecoverage area, the size and type of population and investment costs,” says Popeneciu.

The initial estimated investment in such a center that meets EU norms was calculated at around EUR 50,000. “We managed to keep costs even lower and in Tulcea the investment was below EUR 30,000. We now wish to take future investments down to EUR 20,000. However, as there will be a national network of 100-120 such centers, you can add up the figures,” he said.

Big cities that usually spearhead change in any domain are not scrambling to enroll in this initiative. “The most complicated thing is that the city hall needs to make available a publically owned strip of land that covers, on average, 500 sqm, and free of charge. This is why Bucharest is not even in the scheme yet,” says Popeneciu.

With a population of over 2 million, the capital would require 40 such centers. At the moment, there is none, even though discussions are under way with sector 4 and sector 6 city halls.

“The recycling industry is a business of the future that has become a strategic-political preoccupation. This means that European politicians will relentlessly pursue WEEE recycling and bring it out of the black and grey markets, which is especially the case in Central and Eastern Europe. This means that in Romania, we should not harbor the illusion that nobody can see us. Because this issue is about a fundamental need in the future,” Popeneciu adds. 

otilia.haraga@business-review.ro