7 April 2023

Launch of New EUnited Environmental Committee – March 2023

On 28 March 2023, EUnited held its first horizontal Environmental Committee meeting online with members from our Cleaning and Municipal Equipment sectors.

The press release is available here.

The committee has already been active in the EUnited Cleaning Sector for several years. However, as environmental legislation becomes increasingly important for the businesses of member companies in other EUnited sectors, a more cross-sectoral approach to dealing with environmental issues is necessary. Consequently, EUnited has taken the decision to transform our pre-existing Cleaning sector focused Environmental Committee into a horizontal committee for members of both the EUnited Cleaning and Municipal Equipment sectors.

The current topics and files of focus for the committee will include but not be limited to the following:

Chemicals

• REACH: Aims to improve the protection of human health and the environment from the risks that can be posed by chemicals,
• RoHS: Aims to reduce the environmental and health risks posed by hazardous substances in EEE.

Waste

• WEEE: Sets out rules for the collection, treatment and recycling of waste electronic equipment,
• WFD: Sets out the basic concepts and definitions related to waste management and established the hierarchy of waste management options,
• PPWD: Sets out targets for the recovery and recycling of packaging waste, and rules for the labelling and composition of packaging materials.

Green claims - a directive that will aim to set out the rules for companies to substantiate and communicate green claims

European Critical Raw Materials Act – an initiative that will aim to reinforce EU monitoring capacities and strengthen both the EU value chain and EU external policies on CRMs.

The new committee will be chaired by Mr. Steve George (Regulatory Affairs and Sustainability Manager at Numatic International Ltd.). Numatic is a member of the EUnited Cleaning sector. Mr. George has participated in the Environmental Committee already for a number of years and he has expertise in environmental matters. He is also currently a member of various EUnited Standardization and Technical Committees as well as Expert Working Groups. The formal election and nomination of the committee chair will take place during the first committee meeting.

For questions or comments please contact Konstantinos Sapounas, Junior Technical Advisor at EUnited (k.sapounas@eu-nited.net).