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The European Parliament voted to include a "by-product" definition in the Waste Framework Directive. A few days later, the Commission came up with an "Interpretative Communication". The purpose of this article is to find a way of exploring the "new" definition of by-products in order to find more utility than disturbance.

In recent years the end-of-life phase has come into focus. European Union directives have been issued regulating certain product groups and producer responsibility. Vehicles and electronic products are the first to be identified and targeted. EU environmental legislation acts as a driver for increased reuse, recycling and recovery. The overall aim of the presented activities has been to increase the effectiveness of current recycling practices, both in terms of design changes and end-of-life treatment process suggestions. A "pre-step" operation has been suggested, in order to either salvage valuable (or toxic) material or to remove diluting bulk material. As this thesis is focused on the recycling of white-goods specifically dishwashers the suggested prestep would be removal of valuable copper prior to shredding. A life cycle assessment (LCA) study has been conducted. The purpose of this study was to determine if using a pre-step is beneficial from an environmental point of view or not. Furthermore, an experiment on the usability of recycled polymers from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) has been performed. Based on this work polymer recycling process suggestions are presented. Based on research in the fields of design for recycling, design for disassembly and EcoDesign the material hygiene (MH) concept of design for recycling is formulated. This concept is tested on a disassembly field study carried out at a waste collection facility and a polymer recycling experiment at a refrigerator fragmentation plant. Five MH factors are suggested: MH Mix, MH Identification, MH Resources, and MH Weight and MH Map. Additionally, a MH mind-set is presented. ; QC 20100816

Waste is generated along the production of products (i.e. during extracting resources, processing and production) and also when unwanted products are discarded. Although most consumers are aware of the amount of waste they dispose of, relatively few are aware of the waste generated in the course of producing the goods that they consume. This project builds upon previous work to advance a methodological approach for quantification and communication of the pre-consumer waste footprint of products. The purpose is to address the main criticism that the work received in a peer-review process: how to deal with the subjectivity of waste, are the indicator appropriated for communicating results, what is the usefulness of a product waste footprint. An online open consultation was carried out in order to gather opinions and inputs of several stakeholder groups (e.g. life cycle assessment (LCA) experts and practitioners, waste management experts, consumers, and authorities) on 5 methodological details (MDs) of the approach: MD1 effectiveness for differentiating waste and by-products, MD2 effectiveness for defining which material flow shall be accounted for, MD3 adequacy for representing an indicator to convey environmental significance of waste types, MD4 usefulness of a product waste footprint metric for stakeholder groups and MD5 usefulness of a product waste footprint metric in different contexts. Most of the respondents expressed that the guidelines described in the methodology are good enough for the purposes of MD1-2. Part of the respondents found the draft guidelines for MD1-2, which were based the Interpretative Communication on waste and by-products of the European Commission, to be unnecessarily complex for the exercise; hence not sufficiently adequate. Furthermore, some responses from prominent LCA experts and practitioners declared that qualitatively attributing environment significance to different types of wastes may not be adequate (MD3). The results also suggested that a product waste footprint metric would be mostly useful and/or needed (MD4) for (1) consumers and (2) government; and in contexts (MD5) of (a) improving environmental awareness of consumers, (b) environmental policy making, (c) visualising waste flows in a circular economy and (d) improving resource efficiency in industry, and less useful/needed (MD5) in a (e) business-to-business context. Finally, although the PWF is fundamentally a simple measure of resource use and not of eventual environmental damage (e.g. abiotic resource depletion, eutrophication, land use change), further studies could examine whether the PWF is a good proxy of life cycle environmental impacts in specific categories of product or manufacturing process. The LCA community is encourage to devote more attention to how consumers may or may not use product related environmental information and apply this knowledge in advancing metrics that are useful for consumers. ; Waste is generated along the production of productsand also when unwanted products are discarded. This project builds upon previous work to advance a methodological approach for quantification and communication of the pre-consumer waste footprint of products. Den här rapporten finns endast på engelska.

With the treatment of waste set to increase -- since the volume of waste is closely related to economic growth -- waste transport will be a major challenge in the future. This raises several issues. Should transport regulations be made more stringent and their implementation reviewed? Should the proximity principle -- incorporated in the regulations in the interests of environmental protection -- be questioned, since it prevents the consolidation of flows in sufficient volume to make the most environmentally-friendly modes of transport viable?. The environmental performance of waste transport