EU pushes e-waste rules toward prevention

The European Environmental Bureau (EEB) and a coalition of civil society organisations and businesses are urging the EU to shift its e-waste rules toward prevention. The revision comes as Europe has placed more than 14.4 million tonnes of electrical and electronic equipment on the market in 2023, up 89% since 2012.

Why Prevention Matters

Europe is buying and discarding more electronics than ever. In 2023, more than 14.4 million tonnes of electrical and electronic equipment were placed on the EU market - an increase of more than 89% since 2012.

The EU’s Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive was intended to curb the environmental and social harms of electronic waste, but a 2025 European Commission assessment found that many products remain difficult or expensive to repair, reuse is limited, collection is inadequate, and valuable materials are still lost.

Proposed Targets

The EEB blueprint calls for a set of binding targets that mirror the waste hierarchy: prevention, reuse, collection, and recycling. Prevention targets would curb the amount of e-waste generated over time, taking into account product group differences and average lifetimes. Reuse would receive its own target, separate from recycling, to give repairable items a fighting chance. Collection targets would focus on convenient return locations, retailer acceptance without unnecessary conditions, and deposit-return systems for high-impact products. Recycling targets would move beyond total weight to material-specific goals, ensuring critical raw materials are recovered.

Reforming Producer Responsibility

Current Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes are fragmented and focus mainly on financing post-waste treatment. The proposal is to create joint producer organisations that would be directly responsible for meeting all four targets. Governance would involve municipalities, social enterprises, repair operators, and civil society. Producer fees would fund repair funds, bonuses, training, spare-part recovery, and support for social enterprises. A bonus-malus system would make durable, repairable, upgradeable, and reusable products cheaper, while wasteful designs would become more expensive.

Ensuring Reuse Survival

Even if targets are met, reusable products often die in collection and transport. The revised rules should require reuse-first sorting before recycling and set mandatory standards for transport and logistics that preserve repairability. Consumers should be able to separate functional or repairable items at collection points. Recognised preparation-for-reuse operators, especially social enterprises, would receive priority access to collected equipment, and waste operators and producer responsibility organisations would be required to cooperate with them.

Next Steps

The EU’s upcoming revision of the WEEE Directive offers a chance to reduce resource use, mainstream repair and reuse, support social enterprises, and strengthen Europe’s resilience. To achieve this, policymakers must place prevention at the heart of the Directive, adopt targets that follow the waste hierarchy, transform producer responsibility into a circularity driver, and give reusable products the priority they deserve. The revised rules should require reuse-first sorting before recycling, and set mandatory standards for transport and logistics that preserve repairability and reusability.