Pillar 1

Advancing
Sustainable Lifestyles

For a long time, APPLiA’s members have dedicated significant resources to ensuring the home appliance sector in Europe is first-in-class in delivering energy efficiency improvements, contributing by almost one half to achieving the EU’s 20% energy efficiency target for 2020. In light of the EU’s 2030 energy and climate policies, APPLiA has re-confirmed its support to the EU’s objectives.

For a long time, APPLiA’s members have dedicated significant resources to ensuring the home appliance sector in Europe is first-in-class in delivering energy efficiency improvements, contributing by almost one half to achieving the EU’s 20% energy efficiency target for 2020. In light of the EU’s 2030 energy and climate policies, APPLiA has re-confirmed its support to the EU’s objectives.

With a view to ensuring future energy efficiency gains at EU level, and to ensuring that all EU citizens are given equal opportunities to contribute to reducing climate change thanks to energy efficient appliances, the adoption of measures that are balanced and well-scaled over time are crucial. Such measures will enable the home appliance sector to deliver where it is most able to affect change, ultimately resulting in greater overall gains for energy efficiency, as well as a circular economy.

However, a full circularity of the economy goes beyond what economic actors alone can do: it embraces all our society and is a societal challenge. In effect, we need a circular society approach to ensure a circular economy. Our sector has continuously provided a significant contribution to the circular society, through designing and manufacturing innovative products that cut resources, save labour, time, money, and reduce waste. Manufacturers are constantly improving products to maintain this added value – for all society.

Interested to join the circular society community? Please visit www.circularsociety.eu

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Average material composition of home appliances

To produce and supply appliances, the home appliance industry uses various materials, metal and plastics in particular. These materials come mainly from virgin sources but also to some extent from recycled sources.

The average material composition of large home appliances is dominated by steel and stainless steel metals, while plastics are becoming more prominent for small appliances.

While some materials are common to many product types like steel or plastics, others are mainly associated with very specific products and functionalities, e.g. concrete in the counterweight of washing machines; or glass in fridges, washing machines and other kitchen appliances.

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Amount of material in appliances installed or stored in private homes

The penetration of home appliances, particularly for those ensuring the basic needs of EU citizens, but also the increase of penetration of small appliances, resulted in a total stock in 2016 of more than 67 Mt.

When looking also at other electric and electronic equipment (EEE), the total is more than 110 Mt.

These appliances represent a source of materials for the EU, embedded in our daily life. Materials are used in their production and remain during the use phase in homes.

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Home appliance waste generation

Home appliance waste is made up of three main streams:
• Electrical and Electronic Waste (WEEE) - the estimated amount of WEEE generated in EU28 is assumed to be steadily increasing.
• Packaging waste, mainly in the distribution phase.
• Batteries, particularly for small home appliances are also included in the products and thus in the waste generated when home appliances reach their end of life.

Since the WEEE Directive1 entered into force, the home appliance industry has proactively developed dedicated take back schemes across the EU to ensure waste collected by municipalities and retailers is properly managed. The industry has made considerable investments ensuring the recycling and treatment of electronic-waste by setting up recycling schemes across Europe to ensure that discarded products can be collected and recycled according to best available technology and in line with the established standards to meet the recycling and recovery targets set by the EU legislation. This has been further enhanced in recent years by the development of European treatment standards which help ensure the proper recycling of this stream of waste which is rich in secondary raw materials (WEEE treatment standards).

Nevertheless, there are three key areas in which industry and society will need to work in the future to ensure even better environmental sound treatment of all home appliance WEEE and ensuring optimal recovery of materials.
• Consumer behaviour
• WEEE Flows
• Recycling and recovery of home appliance WEEE

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EU home appliance WEEE flows

It is estimated that 33% of EU home appliance WEEE generated is collected by industry, a complementary stream of 17% is collected by commercial actors outside industry flows and an estimated 5% end up in the waste bin. This leaves a gap of 44% for which the handling is not documented. There are indications that these gap flows are combined with the treatment of other metal scrap flows.

The reason for this knowledge gap is the lack of data reported to competent authorities, which does not allow the assessment of the real collection and recycling performances of each individual Member State. This data should take into account, not only the amounts collected and treated by industry, but also the amount handled by other commercial operators.

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Share of products that are collected and recycled

Home appliance material composition is the main driver for the treatment and recovery of products at the end of life. The intrinsic economic value of materials has been a trigger for recycling long before the formal WEEE take back schemes were set up by industry as part of their compliance with the WEEE Directive producer responsibility requirements.

Nowadays, the market dynamics of commodity prices play a fundamental role in how home appliances are collected and treated. That is one of the main reasons why a high share of large “metal dominated” home appliances are collected and recycled by other operators, but not necessarily accounted for.

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