Green Stamp (environmental fee)

Green Stamp
Consumers Contribution to Environmental Protection

Adjusting to EU requirements regarding the electric and electronic equipment waste (EEEW)

As member of the European Union, Romania has to comply with the European Directive 96/2002 that concerns electric and electronic equipment waste (EEEW). Based on the newly adopted regulations, Romanian importers, producers and distributors of electronic and electric equipment (EEE) were facing the responsibility to collect, recycle and eliminate EEEW.

Steps taken to implement the Green Stamp

To comply with this directive, the big importers, producers and distributors of EEE decided in 2006 to set up joint organisations to better manage the collecting, reusing, and recycling of EEEW. As a result four organizations have been set up: ECO TIC (specialised in electronics and ICT equipment), ROREC (electric appliances), ROLAMP (lighting equipment) and Environ. Their mains objectives are to create and operate a system for collecting, recycling and reusing of EEEW on behalf of their members and to increase public awareness while environmental issues are concerned.

ECO TIC, the first organisation of this kind in Romania, proposed an ecological tax- the green stamp- that the producers and distributors could include in the prices of equipment in order to recuperate part of the recycling costs. The Romanian producers and distributors of electric and electronic equipment preferred this system of “visible fee”, while in other EU countries the tax is incorporated in the price.

The joint organizations for EEEW management have to obtain a licence from the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development and from the National Agency for Environment Protection, presenting an action plan that specifies the value of the “green stamp” which is based upon estimates of the costs for EEEW collecting and recycling.

The fact that the producers and distributors of electronic and electric equipment have understood the benefits of organising a management system for the EEEW is best demonstrated by the spectacular increase in ECO TIC’s membership: from 32 members (in 2006) up to 309 (in 2008).

ECO TIC takes over its members’ responsibilities of collecting/ recycling EEEW based on a contract. The members have the obligation to report quarterly the sales and to pay to the association the value of the “green stamp” calculated according to the sales volumes. ECO TIC contracts a specialized company in transporting, collecting and recycling waste, to take care of the EEEW gathered by its members. ECO TIC targets the grey equipment producers and distributors (ICT), as well as the brown equipment producers and distributors (home appliances), representing about 35% from the total EEEW market. In 2007, ECO TIC decided on a “green stamp” value of 7 lei (approx. 2 Euro) for a series of products.

EEEW Management System Benefits

Valentin Negoita, ECO TIC President, explains the benefits of the EEEW management system for the ICT sector: “Mainly, we are talking about logistic support. We take over the member-companies’ responsibilities concerning informing the population, dealing with the public authorities and the waste management companies that we hire to collect and recycle EEEW. The waste management companies bill the association for services rendered, and report the quantities of waste collected / recycled. There is also an economic aspect to this process: as resources are becoming more and more scarce and expensive, we help the producers to recuperate and reuse some of the raw materials they need. Another benefit is that we assist our members in providing additional services to their most important clients, such as banks or large companies. These clients purchase high volumes of equipment and they need to get rid of old equipments the easiest way possible. In such cases, our members rely on the collection/ recycling system of our organisation.”

In more than 60 towns in Romania ECO TIC offers to large EEE retailers containers for collecting waste. More than 100 tons of wastes have been collected in 2007 and 450 tons have been collected in the first half of 2008 through this system.

Social Responsibility

The complex system of collecting and recycling EEEW also includes a social responsibility component: reintroducing equipments that are still functional in the consumers’ circuit. In 2007, ECO TIC, in partnership with the National Regulatory Authority for Communications and Information Technology (ANRCTI) donated 50 restored computers to 26 telecommunication centres created in the rural areas through the Universal Service Implementation Program. Such an initiative support the main objective of the EU policy concerning EEEW management, which is to avoid producing such waste, as well as to reuse as much as possible the equipments still functional and the raw materials recuperated.

Valentin Negoita, ECO TIC President: “Besides the environmental component, our initiative also contributes to increase social responsibility in the ICT sector. By facilitating access to IT and communications services to users from remote areas, we contribute to reducing the digital gap between rural and urban areas.”

In March 1st, 2008, ECO TIC decided to reduce the “green stamp” values and to differentiate it according to different equipment categories: 5 lei for large EEE (LCD, television sets, copy-machines, monitors, phone systems) and 1 leu for smaller EEE (cell phones, DVD players, PDA, radar detectors). For the industrial equipment as survey equipment, antennas, transmitters, a 2 lei tax per kilogram shall be applied. There are some electronics as radios or portable CD players that are exempted from the “green stamp”.

ECO TIC rationale for reducing the tax was to encourage the sales of IT equipment and other electronic and electric appliances. The association reported also a huge increase in membership, resulting in amounts collected from the “green stamp” during 2007 that were higher than the costs of collecting and recycling the wastes (for the first 8 months of the EEEW management system).