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April 25, 2025

REACH Revision

FEAD, the European Waste Management Association, welcomes the European Commission’s presentation at CARACAL and its efforts to modernise REACH. We appreciate the opportunity to provide feedback on the upcoming revision and we are committed to supporting the EU’s ambition of creating a more circular and non-toxic economy.

Introduction

  • The upcoming REACH revision is highly targeted and not intended as a deregulation exercise. Nonetheless, the practical impacts of REACH on the waste management sector are significant.
  • The sector has limited familiarity with REACH, as the regulation was not originally designed with secondary raw materials in mind.
  • There is a pressing need to better align REACH with the realities of waste management and recycling, especially as the volume of materials transitioning from waste to product status continues to increase in light of the EU’s ambition to reach a 24% Circular Material Use Rate.
  • The recycling sector handles materials with a significant time delay—sometimes decades after their initial use. This unique situation requires special consideration in REACH, as recyclers have little control over the chemical composition of the waste they receive. Recognising this is essential to support a truly circular economy.

Registration Exemptions and End-of-Waste

  • Currently, recyclers benefit from a registration exemption if the recovered substance is the same as one already registered. However, proving sameness in practice is often difficult, particularly due to lack of access to upstream data.
  • As End-of-Waste criteria are more systematically developed across the EU, more secondary raw materials will fall under the scope of REACH. As the chemical safety of secondary raw materials is already ensured within End-of-Waste processes and other REACH provisions when applicable, we should not duplicate efforts via REACH registration. Therefore, we are calling for secondary raw materials to be systematically exempted from registration, with their chemical safety instead being ensured via EoW criteria, a tool specifically designed for our sector, unlike registration.

Polymers: Inclusion and Practical Limits

  • We note the inclusion of polymers under REACH. Under the right conditions, this may support the phase-out of the most hazardous variants and help achieve cleaner material cycles.
  • However, the proposed notification step for all polymers >1 ton/year should not apply to waste operators and recyclers. With countless combinations of polymers already in circulation, recyclers often lack detailed information on polymer composition, especially when dealing with legacy waste streams. Extending the registration exemption for recyclers to notification procedure is therefore essential.
  • Any future registration requirements should be risk-based and proportionate, targeting polymers indicating a hazard first, always keeping in mind the entire value chain and downstream users in the prioritisation process.

Supply Chain Communication and the Digital Product Passport (DPP)

  • There is uncertainty around how Article 33 (SVHC communication) and Safety Data Sheet obligations apply to secondary raw materials. Further guidance is needed to clarify compliance pathways for recyclers who often lack upstream data.
  • The proposed integration of DPP with REACH offers potential benefits for recyclers in theory, but in practice, it risks adding burdens without delivering usability:
    • Recyclers are rarely the intended end-users of DPP systems.
    • The availability of information does not guarantee its usability, especially when DPP standards and interoperability across platforms remain underdeveloped – see FEAD’s position on DPP for waste management sector.
  • For secondary raw materials, where formulations are complex and variable, DPP-based compliance may not be realistic without significant adjustments in design.

Risk Management and Authorisation Processes

  • We strongly support the introduction of the Essential Use Concept in both restriction and authorisation processes.
  • Authorisations should only be granted when End-of-Life impacts have been properly assessed and when standardised detection methods in waste matrix and reasonable treatment solutions exist. Products containing authorised substances should be properly labelled to ensure transparency and facilitate sorting.
  • Recyclers filter out contaminants to support non-toxic material cycles, but need to be supported in this role by completely ceasing primary production of substances of concern before imposing zero tolerance thresholds on recycled materials.
  • The polluter-pays principle must be better reflected in authorisation decisions: recyclers should not bear the entire financial burden of removing contaminants introduced by upstream actors.
  • The Generic Risk Management Approach (GRA) and grouping of substances (including for polymers) should become the default mechanism, enabling more streamlined regulatory action and supporting non-toxic material cycles.
  • Recycling activities should be systematically considered when setting new restrictions, and the immediate application of such restrictions to recyclate should always be carefully evaluated to consider a phase-out approach – according to the lifespan of products containing the substance and the available detection methods.

Enforcement and Market Surveillance

  • We appreciate the Commission’s focus on enforcement as a means to ensure a level playing field across the EU, particularly with regard to imports and e-commerce.
  • The integration of REACH with customs and DPP systems is a welcome step forward, but it must be supported by adequate physical checks.
  • The requirement to have a responsible economic operator for compliance with REACH for importers is a positive development. This could be aligned with existing obligations under Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes, creating coherence across EU legislation.
  • We request the development of analytical methods and call for a clear roadmap for standardisation of such methods.
  • Enforcement mechanisms should ensure that the cost of being non-compliant with REACH exceeds the cost of compliance.

Conclusion

REACH, in its current form, is not well suited to secondary raw materials. It is designed for products with well-defined formulations and known substance data—criteria which are often not met by secondary raw materials.

While we support the application of REACH restrictions to ensure chemical safety, we urge the Commission to clarify the application of REACH to secondary raw materials, and to develop dedicated and proportionate compliance pathways for the circular economy.

FEAD is the European Waste Management Association, representing the private waste and resource management industry across Europe, including 20 national waste management federations and 3,000 waste management companies. Private waste management companies operate in 60% of municipal waste markets in Europe and in 75% of industrial and commercial waste. This means more than 500,000 local jobs, fuelling €5 billion of investments into the economy every year.