LIFE, the European Union's environmental program, announced on June 04 that WEEELABEX is "the best environmental project" of last year. WEEELABEX has successfully developed new standards for WEEE recycling and monitoring processes, with international applicability.
WEEELABEX is an initiative of European collection systems gathered in the WEEE Forum. The standard provides uniform rules for the collection, storage, transport, processing, recycling and reuse of electronic waste, instructs specialized auditors to monitor these stages, as well as preparing reports on volumes processed and results achieved after recycling.
Recognition as a key project in the circular economy, where fractions of WEEE are recovered and reused, helps to persuade other Member States to introduce these standards into relevant legislation.
The LIFE Evaluation Committee noted that WEEELABEX also provides guidelines outside Europe. There are references to WEEELABEX in America, China, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Kenya, Brazil and South Africa during the development of similar standards in those regions.
EU Member States, which are represented by the LIFE program committee, select environmental projects completed during that year each year. In 2013, six projects were designated as the best.
More details can be found on
http://www.weee-forum.org/weeelabex-0
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/life/bestprojects/bestenv2013/index.htm