BIR News

BIR Champions Recyclables Cause

In the ongoing international battle to ensure that recyclables are not classified as waste, the BIR is leading the charge.

Created in 1948, the Bureau of International Recycling, Brussels, is the international federation of industries involved in the recovery and recycling of iron and steel, nonferrous metals, paper stock, textiles and plastics. More than 50 countries are represented.

For some time, BIR members and the recycling industry as a whole have had to tackle an increasing number of environmental challenges, mainly as a result of the confusion between the waste management sector and our profession. The Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Waste, especially, has been the focus of a lot of attention.

Due to the erroneous belief that many of the materials we trade are mere "wastes", the decision to ban the export of "hazardous waste" from a series of developed countries – those belonging to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development and others – to non-OECD countries, as of December 31,1997, has placed recyclers in an uncomfortable position. The question of what is or is not hazardous is up to the convention’s Technical Working Group.

The TWG has met several times over the last year. Francis Veys, secretary general of the BIR, has repeatedly been asked to voice the interests of the recycling industry at these meetings.

And almost a third of some 150 representatives of more than 50 countries who attended the eleventh meeting of the TWG in Manchester, England, in September were recyclers.

At that meeting, the TWG confirmed the decision, made at a previous meeting, to exclude a long list of secondary metals from the export ban. It added to this list lead, cadmium and beryllium. But unsorted batteries and batteries containing lead, cadmium or mercury were among recyclables confirmed as subject to the ban. The Group also transferred to the "B" list of materials not subject to the ban – if they are uncontaminated – some substances previously slated for further study.

However, it was unable to come to a conclusion on the classification of PVC-insulated cables and materials containing copper or zinc compounds, including zinc ash. Further technical information will have to be presented by the industry at the next TWG meeting scheduled for February. In Manchester, BIR consultant John Donaldson submitted scientific data as technical evidence that the majority of materials under consideration were not hazardous.

"Our ability to establish a scientific basis for our case was extremely important, and good progress has been made," says Veys.