Waste Shipment Regulation

The EU Waste Shipment Regulation (WSR) is the EU’s framework for supervising and controlling shipments of waste within its borders.

Revised in 2024, the rules aim to:

  • Streamline intra-EU shipments
  • Prevent unsafe exports
  • Improve tracking and enforcement

Why is it important?

For the precious metals industry, the EU waste policies are critical in ensuring that valuable materials, such as gold, silver, and platinum group metals, are responsibly recovered and reused. These metals play a key role in the circular economy, with recovery rates often exceeding 95%.

Precious metals are commonly found in e-waste and end-of-life products. Effective shipments of waste are crucial to:

  • Recover valuable materials.
  • Reduce environmental risks.
  • Support circular value chains.
  • EPMF OPINION

With the revision of the WSR complete, there are several aspects that would further benefit the precious metals sector as it is implemented. In particular, the EPMF calls for:

  • A strong European single market for waste and an EU-level approach to waste shipments with uniform application across Member States. This would remove rbarriers to intra-EU waste shipments as well as imports and exports of waste to and from like-minded 3rd country partners
  • Ensure coherence and harmonisation between the WSR and other EU policies, including the CRM Act, the Ambient Air Quality Directive, and the Water Framework Directive.
  • Uphold a risk-based approach vs. a hazard-based approach for waste shipments.
  • Make the Green-listed regime for intra-EU waste shipments permanent beyond 1 January 2027.
  • Introduce separate, well defined waste codes for non-hazardous e-waste to ensure regulatory certainty and harmonisation.
  • Avoid setting contamination thresholds for metals as this would omit valuable sources of CRMs from being exploited.
  • Swift implementation of new measures including the adoption of Electronic Data Interchange to reduce administrative burdens. Establish the Digital Waste Shipment System (DIWASS) as foreseen in the Regulation.

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