End-of-Waste glass criteria to come into force
The Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission’s in-house science service, announced yesterday (18 December) that end-of-waste criteria (EoW) for glass cullet will come into force on 31 December 2012.
Adopted by the EC in July, the regulations state that glass cullet - generated from the recovery of waste glass - must be of a high enough standard to be used in the production of glass substances or objects by re-melting in glass manufacturing facilities.
It also places limits on the amount of contaminants such as metals, organics and stones, which can be contained in glass cullet in order for it to be classed as a secondary raw material.
According to the new regulations, glass cullet can only contain:
- Up to and including 50 parts per million (ppm) of ferrous metals
- Up to and including 60 ppm of non-ferrous metals
- Less than 100 ppm for non-metal, non-glass inorganics (such as ceramics, stones and porcelain) for cullet over one milimetre in size
- Less than 1500 ppm for cullet less than one millimetre in size
- Up to and including 2000 ppm of organics (such as paper, rubber, plastic, fabrics, wood).
The UK, which currently has its own regulatory controls for materials not yet covered by EC regulations (including glass, copper and paper) is required to introduce the end-of-waste criteria under the revised Waste Framework Directive (rWFD) by 11 June 2013.
Speaking to Resource in July, Rebecca Cocking, Head of Container Affairs at British Glass Manufacturers’ Confederation, said that the UK needed glass cullet to be of remelt quality as co-mingled collections had been damaging glass quality.
“The introduction of co-mingled collections has resulted in glass being contaminated with non-glass. The variations in glass contaminants and the cost of processing to remove the non-glass is not currently economical [and] in order to continue to use recycled glass, some manufacturers are importing material to ensure cullet quality remains high”, she said.
“From an EU point of view [the EoW] allows the free movement of processed cullet and removes some of the red tape. It also reinforces the UK government’s decision that glass being returned to remelt has a higher environmental benefit than other applications.”
The JRC has said it hopes the new regulation will ‘assure a second life for bottles and other glass containers’ and ‘stimulate European recycling markets by creating legal certainty, removing unnecessary administrative burden and releasing safe and clean secondary raw materials from the waste process’.
Under the rWFD, the European Commission was given a mandate to set up end-of-waste criteria for certain materials recovered from waste to ensure that EU countries have ‘clear and harmonised criteria’ to clarify under which conditions waste could ‘cease to be waste and could be regarded as a non-waste material to be freely traded as such on the open market’.
The end-of-waste criteria for glass cullet became an official regulation when it was published in the 55th volume of the EC’s Official Journal on 11 December.
