European Union policy on Ecodesign in the circular

economy

Karolina D'Cunha

Deputy Head of Eco-Innovation & Circular Economy Unit

DG Environment

European Commission

Conference - The role of ecodesign in the circular economy

Brussels, 16 June 2015

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Interventions: • Support innovation

Interventions: •Pricing and trading•Voluntary initiatives•Producer responsibility•Business support•Procurement•Labelling•Public information

Interventions:•Minimumstandards

PRODUCT INTERVENTIONS – Overall approach

Cut out the least sustainable products

Encourage development of new, more sustainable products

Drive the existing market towards greater sustainability

Ecolabel

Eco

desi

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GPP

EU Product policies

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Ecodesign (Directive 2009/125/EC)

• Setting of mandatory requirements for energy-related products to improve their environmental performance

• Products not meeting these requirements cannot be placed on the market (applies also to imports)

• Allows access to single market (CE-marking based)

• Establishes the framework (conditions, criteria, procedures, etc.)

• Legal Basis Article 114 (TFEU): free movement of products within the internal market

• Products to be addressed are stipulated in Ecodesign Working Plans

• Basis for any measure is a technical preparatory study (MEErP methodology)

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Ecodesign (Directive 2009/125/EC)

• Covers all significant environmental impacts of products over the life-cycle

• So far, mostly been used to address energy efficiency of products in the use phase

• Requirements have recently been adopted on durability for some product groups (hose, electric motor of vacuum cleaners; information on notebook batteries)

• Potential to address material efficiency of products to ensure durability, reparability, modularity, easy recycling, etc. (80% of a product's environmental impact is determined by the design phase)

• Several projects are ongoing to develop verifiable criteria on resource efficiency

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Ecodesign - Criteria for action

• What products?

• Significant volume of sales and trade, indicatively 200.000 units p.a.

• Significant environmental impact

• Significant potential for improvement in terms of its environmental impact without entailing excessive costs

• No (significant) negative impact on:

• Functionality

• Health and safety

• Affordability

• Industry’s Competitiveness

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Energy Label (Directive 2010/30/EU)

"the indication by labelling and standard product information of the consumption of energy and other resources by energy-related products"

• Sets mandatory labelling requirements for energy-related products to enable consumers to make informed choices

• Ranks products according to their energy efficiency on an A to G scale

• Obligation to label how product performs, can continue to sell products with any performance level

• For the time being, only "in use phase" consumption of resources can be labelled

• No possibility to label other "embedded" environmental impacts

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Energy Label (Directive 2010/30/EU)

• Once the majority of products in a certain category reach class A, up to three classes (A+/A++/A+++) may be added on top of class A

• Displays annual energy consumption or energy consumption per cycle, as well as other impacts: e.g. water consumption, volume of the appliance, etc.

• Ecodesign measures are often accompanied by an Energy Label (regulation) mainly for consumer products

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Energy Labelling – examplesWashing machines Vacuum cleaners Luminaires

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Ecodesign and Energy labelling -Results Achieved

• 175 Mtoe primary energy savings per year by 2020, more than the annual primary energy consumption of Italy

• 340 Mt CO2 equivalent less greenhouse gas emissions, more than 7% of EU total emissions in 2010

• € 102 billion net saving on consumer expenditure, equivalent to € 432 per household per year

• € 55 billion extra revenue for industry, wholesale and retail sector

• 800.000 extra direct jobs for industry, wholesale and retail sector

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Looking forward – Revision of Energy Labelling Directive

• Being developed, to be adopted by the Commission shortly

• Back to A to G (including rescaling)

• Market surveillance (e.g. product registration?)

?

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• Circular economy systems keep the added value in products for as long as possible and eliminate waste.

• They keep resources within the economy when a product has reached the end of its life, so that they can be productively used again and again and hence create further value.

• Source: COM (2014) 398 "Towards a circular economy"

What is Circular Economy?

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What is the EU up to?

• Waste policy: ambitious yet realistic targets

• Looking at whole 'circle': Exploiting synergies and overcoming barriers across the whole value chain

• Focus on EU added value: concrete priorities for actions at the EU level that bring added value in promoting a transition towards a more circular economy

• Financing circular economy

Focus on products

Product design

Requirements for products

Requirements for producers

Technical design (more homogenous material use to facilitate material separation, requirements on dismantability, reparability, recyclability)

Material design (requirements on chemical composition of products to make them, as far as possible, free of hazardous substances affecting future recycling or recovery and ensuring that the materials used to produce products can be easily separated and recycled without quality loss)

Action against obsolescence (e.g. extending the duration of a minimum warranty, requirements for manufacturers to provide for certain categories of products information on repair and maintenance or to provide spare parts for a number of years after purchase) and at ensuring that information on the chemical content of products is available to facilitate their recycling and recovery

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Product’s “technical” design

• Manual dismantling allows recovery of over 90% of the precious metals in waste flat screens.

• For manual dismantling to remain economically viable, one should be able to dismantle a small screen in less than 11 minutes.

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Product’s “chemical” design

• Link between rules on chemicals and waste for achieving higher recycling rates.

• Example - PVC covered under REACH: raises questions for SMEs active in plastic recycling.

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Possible priority sectors

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Circular Economy package & product design

• Role of Ecodesign to ensure that product design takes account of circular economy

• How to make better use of existing tools? Durability, reparability, reusability, recyclability

• Role of consumer legislation

• Ecodesign Working Plan 2015-2017 (ongoing work, e.g. compressors, electronic displays; revision of existing measures e.g. lighting, wet appliances; new product groups? Horizontal requirements on e.g. repairability?...)

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Next steps

• New, more ambitious proposal by end 2015

• Reflection on the proposal involving all relevant Commission services

• Stakeholder consultation until 20 August 2015

• Stakeholder conference 25 June 2015

• Proposal planned for Q4 2015

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Thank you for your attention

Karolina D'CunhaDeputy Head of Unit

«Eco-innovation and circular economy»

European CommissionDirectorate General for the Environment

karolina.d'cunha@ec.europa.eu