France gives legal certainty for Reuse

With the publication last December of an "Arrêté", France is defining the conditions for objects and chemicals that were classified as “wastes” to become “products” again. Only certain waste objects and chemicals are covered by this new text: printer cartridges, paper / plastic / wood / metal / glass packaging, end-of-life tires, waste electrical and electronic equipment, waste textile / clothing, and furniture items, amongst other specific wastes suitable for reuse.

The French law is the first to build on the recently revised EU's Waste Framework Directive and its Article 4: “Waste Hierarchy of: (a) prevention; (b) preparing for re-use; (c) recycling; (d) other recovery, e.g. energy recovery; and (e) disposal" and more precisely the: b) “preparing for re-use".

The law sets out criteria for wastes entering "preparing for reuse", wastes used in the "preparing for reuse", and the products derived from the "preparing for reuse".

The law envisages technical and administrative controls that require trained personnel and quality management systems that uses unique identification numbers, for the wastes prepared as products for reuse. A template certificate of compliance is included.

It is important to recognise that the operations carried out by the waste management facilities in "(b) preparing for re-use" would commonly be manual or mechanical operations. [qv. Annex I, Section 2, "2.2. The preparation for reuse provides, where appropriate, cleaning or repair steps to ensure that the waste can be directly reused for the same purpose as originally intended for the object or chemical product from which it originates.