ETIRA and UKCRA lobbied the EU Commission on a future EU ecolabel for imaging technology.
Representatives of ETIRA and UKCRA, including Vincent van
Dijk, Javier Martinez, Keith Moss, Laurent Salzat and Colin Watt, travelled to Brussels to lobby the EU Commission on a prospective EU ecolabel for imaging technology.
The EU currently has plans to include imaging technology to a growing list of products that may carry the EU ecolabel, although ETIRA and UKCRA-proposed plans would include more stringent criteria than those proposed under the forthcoming EU Voluntary Agreement eco-design of Imaging Equipment, an OEM-driven, self-imposed, industry-wide initiative.
Following ETIRA’s successful lobbying from 2009 onwards, the Voluntary Agreement now enforces that OEM printers must accept non-OEM cartridges, nor produce cartridges that prevent reuse.
The meeting in Brussels concluded following claims made by the OEMs that the proposed ecolabel draft contained restrictive limitations, particularly in regards to chemical composition, for which the OEMs claim none of their printers would fit the criteria.
Keith Moss, Sales Manager of The Green Printer Company and UKCRA Chairman, commented: “The ecolabel is such a wide-ranging legislation. It discusses hazardous chemicals, components, in the end we came up with criteria of 25 areas. Around 15 of these deal with toner and inkjet.
“The current wording has some problems. There are certain things in there – like the OEMs taking responsibility on certain aspects of remanufacturing, like notifying how many times a cartridge can be remanufactured, which is like discussing how long a piece of string is.
“Bu the upshot of the meet was, a lot of people are coming back to the table and to a large extent are positive and pro-remanufacturing.”
ETIRA and UKCRA intend to reveal further information in January.