The “Resource Efficiency Assessment of Product- REAPro” method has been developed to assess energy related products against a set of resource efficiency criteria, and to identify hot-spots and improvement potentials. The method has been applied and tested to various case-studies as: dishwashers, electronic displays, computers (notebook and tablets) and enterprise servers. These applications allowed to progressively refine the method from a scientifically perspective, but also to link the results to potentially new policy applications, including the development of new types of workable Ecodesign measures and Ecolabel criteria.
The present report summarizes the recent advancements of the REAPro method and the definition of innovative requirements. In particular, novel elements discussed in the report are:
- Analysis of benefits of reused components: The REAPro method only partially addressed the “reusability” concept (i.e. the potential full reuse of products at the EoL). However, it did not address the possibility that only certain key components (i.e. those having the highest residual value) could be collected from waste for the manufacturing of new products. This aspect has been addressed in a new method that allows to identify if, and to what extent, it is environmentally beneficial to reuse certain components for the remanufacturing of products (Chapter 2). In particular, it is observed that a product with reused components can still be environmentally convenient even if it has a higher energy consumption compared to brand-new products. The results of the method could be applied to build novel policy requirements, which allow higher energy efficiency thresholds for products that embody reused components.
- Revision of the assessment of the index on recyclability: based on comments received by stakeholders related to previous case-studies, the index on recyclability benefit rate of the REAPro method has been revised to clearly separate the environmental impacts of the WEEE recycling from the potential credits due to the secondary raw materials produced (Chapter 3).
- Assessment of the disassemblability and dismantlability of key components: design for disassembly of key components has been identified as a crucial aspect for the repair and recycling of the products. JRC has been working on developing suitable and verifiable requirements to assess disassemblability and dismantlability since 2012. These requirements have evolved, thanks to comments and suggestions from different stakeholders, and in particular from Market surveillance authorities of some Member States, which are in charge of verification of requirements. Two different types of requirements are presented and discussed in this report (Chapter 4): one based on numbers of disassembly steps necessary to disassemble certain components; and other based on criteria to grant the identification, access and extraction of key components for the product’s recycling, including requirements on their fastening and the provision of relevant information for the end-of-life treatments.
- Recyclability of plastics: recycling of plastics is one of the biggest challenges in the WEEE treatment and is addressed in Chapter 5 of this report. Criticalities in plastic recycling have been analysed. In particular, large number of different polymers, technological barriers for plastic sorting, content of additives (especially flame retardants), difficulties for the extraction of plastic parts, downcycling and low value of secondary materials are among the reasons of very low recycling rates for plastics in WEEE. The reports therefore propose some potential requirements based on plastic marking and provision of information. A novel index on the content of flame retardants in plastic parts is proposed. Together with requirements on dismantlability, these requirements could contribute to improve the recycling of plastics from WEEE.
At the time of the report (December 2016) several of the requirements above mentioned have been integrated and discussed in various policy proposals, as the Ecodesign requirements for electronic displays, enterprise servers and commercial refrigerating appliances, and Ecolabel criteria for computers and displays.JRC.D.3-Land Resource
