ReMA Attends INTERPOL Meeting to Counter Illegal Trade
Recently, ISRI Director of Government & International Affairs and Associate Counsel Eric Harris attended a meeting at INTERPOL headquarters in Lyon, France focused on Countering WEEE Illegal Trade (CWIT).
INTERPOL is the world’s largest international police organization, with 190 member countries.
In preparation for the European Commission’s forthcoming Circular Economy policy proposals, the two year CWIT project, funded by the European Union from Sept.2013-Sept. 2015, was largely driven by a lack of data. The event focused on the quantities of WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) flows and actors therein to provide a set of policy recommendations to the European Commission. ReMA applauded the CWIT findings noting that 96 percent of the 9,500,000 million tons of WEEE available for recycling in Europe is traded legally, a real accomplishment. ReMA supported the need to reduce criminal theft and illegal trade while cautioning against criminalizing legitimate reuse and repair, which is generally not considered a waste shipment. ReMA also warned of growing concerns over certain producer responsibility schemes that can distort scrap markets by creating monopolies handpicked by Producer Responsibility Organizations and policies aimed to preclude certain scrap companies from competing in the marketplace. All of which, collectively, can be the true cause of WEEE “leakage” in the supply chain.