The European Standards Organisation (CEN/CENELEC) has circulated the final report of the NEN/BTWG11 working group into standards needs for sustainable chemicals for the Circular Economy. ESPP has followed this work. Although nutrients are partly ‘excluded’ because already covered by the new EU Fertilisers Regulation proposal, the report does cover cycling of biomass by recycling or by degradation to produce nutrients to feed new biomass production. Recommendations for standards needs include the need to develop “Standardised methodology for calculating recycled content” (following proposal of ESPP amongst others) and a “Standard with criteria on properties of relevance for End-of-Waste, such as thresholds of contaminants”. Other recommendations include research into identification of product additives which hamper recycling and establishment at CEN/CENELEC of a mechanism to identify standards that exclude recycled materials. ESPP commented during the report development process that Critical Raw Materials are not well taken into account, but CEN considered this to be “out of scope” of this report. CEN however notes that the Ecodesign Mandate M/543 includes two relevant standards projects: prEN 45557 ‘General method for assessing the proportion of recycled material content in energy related products’ and prEN 45558 ‘General method to declare the use of critical raw materials in energy related products’. ESPP regrets that CEN did not finally recommend to widen the latter to other product types. Also, prEN 45558 only addresses the content of Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) actually present in products, and does not consider ‘indirect’ CRM consumption (used upstream in the production chain, but not longer present in the final product).
CEN prEN 45557 and prEN 45558 proposals of 2017 submitted to final vote 28/12/2018 www.iec.ch/dyn/www/f?p=103:182:11962059414905 Draft texts available here www.eera-recyclers.com/files/cen-clc-tc10sec132dc-secr-enquiry-pren45557-recycled-material-content.pdf and here www.eera-recyclers.com/files/cen-clc-tc10sec126dc-secretary-enquiry-pren45558-use-of-critical-raw-materials-2.pdf
CEN-CLC/BTWG 11 'Sustainable Chemicals' www.cencenelec.eu/news/brief_news/Pages/TN-2018-023.aspx