News: Weibold Academy

IMPEL is an international non-profit association comprising environmental authorities from EU Member States, acceding and candidate countries, EEA and EFTA countries, and potential European Community members. The association is registered in Belgium and its legal seat is in Brussels, Belgium. IMPEL was set up in 1992 as an informal Network of European regulators and authorities concerned with the implementation and enforcement of environmental law. The Network’s objective is to create the necessary impetus in the European Community to make progress on ensuring a more effective application of environmental legislation. Its aim is to promote professional collaboration, information exchange, and best practices among environmental regulators, with the goal of ensuring the effective implementation and enforcement of European environmental law.

Just in February 2023, the Joint Research Council (JRC) of the European Commission [1] published their study results on the environmental and economic factors of chemical recycling (pyrolysis) and energy recovery of end-of-life tires (ELT). The result of this study in advance: chemical recycling via ELT pyrolysis - including mechanical recycling for feedstock processing - is a more sustainable option for managing ELTs than energy recovery via incineration. Revisiting a decades-old knowledge Already in 2010, a much-cited Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) found pyrolysis to be the most eco-effective ELT treatment technology, followed by dynamic devulcanization and ambient grinding. [2] These results were confirmed in 2015 by a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study showing that substituting primary resources with pyrolysis products from ELTs provides significant environmental savings. [3]

In 2018, global trade in waste reached 182 million tonnes with a value of around EUR 80.5 billion. Such trade has increased considerably in the last decades, with a peak of nearly 250 million tonnes in 2011. The EU is an important player in global trade in waste, and considerable volumes of waste are being shipped between Member States. In 2020, the EU exported to non-EU countries around 32.7 million tonnes of waste, an increase of 75% since 2004, with a value of EUR 13 billion. Ferrous and non-ferrous metal scrap, paper waste, plastic waste, textile waste and glass waste represent most of the waste exported from the EU. The EU also imported approximately 16 million tonnes, valued at EUR 13.5 billion. In addition, around 67 million tonnes of waste per year are shipped between Member States (intra-EU shipments of waste). Measures on the supervision and control of shipments of waste have been in place in the EU since 1984. In 1989, the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (Basel Convention) was adopted to address serious problems linked to deposits of toxic wastes imported from abroad to various parts of the developing world. In 1992, the OECD adopted a legally binding decision on the control of transboundary movements of wastes destined for recovery operations (OECD Decision).

The best available technology (BAT) is the technology approved by legislators or regulators for meeting output standards for a particular process. BAT for a given industrial sector is described in reference documents called BREFs (Best Available Techniques Reference documents). BREFs are the result of an exchange of information between European Union Member States, the industries concerned, non-governmental organizations promoting environmental protection and the European Commission. This exchange of information is referred to as the Sevilla process because it is steered within the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the European Commissions' Joint Research Centre, which is based in Seville. The process is codified into law by Commission Implementing Decisions. The most important chapter of the BREFs, the BAT conclusions, are published as implementing decisions of the European Commission in the Official Journal of the European Union. According to the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED), the BAT conclusions shall be the reference for setting permit conditions of (large) industrial installations.

Chemical recycling is an emerging theme in waste management which has the potential to contribute to a low carbon, resource efficient and sustainable economy. In enabling the use of carbonaceous waste as secondary carbon feedstock to replace fossil resources to produce organic chemicals, it could support efforts to transit carbon intensive industries from the linear to a circular carbon economy. A sustainable society with climate-neutral processes requires significant adjustments in the value chains, which are only possible through innovations. In the “Waste4Future” lighthouse project, seven institutions of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (Germany) are pooling their expertise to develop new solutions for this goal, from the raw material basis to material flows and process engineering to the end of a product’s life cycle. They aim to increase energy and resource efficiency when using plastics and thus pave the way for a chemical industry that requires fewer fossil raw materials and causes fewer emissions.

To harmonise enforcement in each EU Member State and check the current level of compliance regarding obligations imposed on industry by the REACH, CLP and PIC regulations, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) installed a forum which coordinates various enforcement projects. One of the main projects are the REACH-EN-FORCE (REF) projects. The REF-projects are carried out by inspectors based in the national authorities in the participating Member States. The resulting information is collected by ECHA and the Forum Working Group. A final report on the findings of the REF-project is then produced. Ultimately, the goal of the REF-projects is to improve the quality of enforcement in the Member States but also to improve the compliance of registrants with the REACH, CLP, and PIC regulations.

Decarbonizing the industrial sector including waste treatment is one of our great challenges. Decarbonisation is needed at greater speed and scale if companies are to remain compliant, viable and profitable. But deciding which pathways to adopt can be challenging. One of the main challenges is the trilemma of energy needing to be secure, affordable, and low carbon. These parameters need to be managed in unison, despite the volatility in prices, policy and supply.

Since their launch in 2015, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 169 timebound targets underpinning them have provided all stakeholders – the private sector included – with a lens through which to translate global needs and ambitions into business solutions. Companies and sectors that apply their creativity and innovation to develop these solutions will be able to better manage risks, anticipate consumer demand, capture growth markets, and strengthen supply chains in line with the sustainability needs outlined by the SDGs.

The chemical recycling of end-of-life tires (ELT) via state-of-the-art pyrolysis technologies does not only avoid greenhouse gas emissions compared to today’s conventional production processes, but it also increases the resource efficiency while closing the loop in the transition to a circular economy. However, civil organisations criticise the production of fuel through chemical recycling, sometimes mutilate the terminology, pointing to the associated environmental impacts, while they overlook the fact that modern ELT pyrolysis concepts are not geared towards the production of "fuels" (which, by the way, should not be defined as "recycling" but rather as less preferred "recovery" according to the EU waste hierarchy).