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A spokesman for BIR said that increasingly complex legislation has been making it more and more difficult for companies to determine which type of control procedures different countries required for their imports of specific secondary materials.
Over the last months, BIR's aim as “a responsible world organisation” had been to compile all these different requirements from ten legislative texts and collated them into one database. The resulting programme now contains over 23,700 entries of data describing the complex labyrinth of control procedures requested by the countries of import or imposed by the European Council and the European Parliament, as well as trade bans applied by some countries.
Since 1993/1994, the European Commission had been sending questionnaires to non-OECD countries, asking them whether they wished to import green list waste (non-hazardous secondary materials destined for recycling) and under which control procedures they wanted to do so. The replies varied considerably country to country: many non-OECD countries indicated the control procedures for the products they wished to receive, some replied that they did not want any “waste”, and some did not reply at all.
BIR Director General Francis Veys commented: “BIR will continue to promote the free trade of non-hazardous secondary materials world-wide and facilitate the supply of all major consuming industries. We will also continue to fight for a clearer distinction between waste materials and secondary raw materials that have been collected and processed according to recognised specifications.”
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