Directives and Legislations - Recycling and Reuse of Products

Recycling and reuse of products and product parts have become common in many industry countries. The acceptance is growing both in the awareness of industries as well as of consumers. Therefore many industries and service providers are diversifying into reusable and recyclable products. One possible option to show products' environmental performance is to label the products with a son of eco-labels. Also politic is promoting the protection of environment, at least to lower the amount of waste, thus certain legislations and directives are enacted e.g. ELV, WEEE, RoHS, Packaging Directive etc. However, the compliance with most of today's directives does not lead directly or as a matter of course to more environmentally friendly products or systems. On the contrary, the constrain to comply with these directives could lead to raise the "overall" environmental burdens caused by considered products or systems, since the directives often only cover the End of Lifes but not other life cycle stages (production and use phase). The EuP, which is a proposed draft framework Directive on the eco-design of energy-using products is expected to be a key driver in achieving the goal of reducing environmental impacts of products. This paper reports on the necessity of life cycle consideration to achieve the targeted improvement of products' environmental performance