Under the revised Waste Framework Directive 2018/851, ECHA has been given a task to build a database on articles containing substances of very high concern (SVHCs) from the Candidate List. The main aim is to support the circular economy, prevent waste being generated, reduce hazardous substances in materials and products and support compliance with the obligation of communicating information on articles containing Candidate List substances down the supply chain. Companies that supply such articles – either produced in the EU or imported – will need to submit company data, Candidate List substance data, the article description and safe use instructions for the article to ECHA as from 5 January 2021.
The database for reporting on Candidate List substances in articles must be established by 5 January 2020 and access should be provided to waste treatment operations and to consumers upon request.
Three main objectives of the database can be summarised as follows:
- Decrease hazardous waste generation by supporting the substitution of substances of concern in articles, placed on the EU market;
- Allow authorities to monitor the use of substances of concern in articles and initiate appropriate actions over the whole life-cycle of articles;
- Provide information to further improve waste treatment operations
For the development of the new database, ECHA is proposing to adopt a different approach, namely an "article-centric" approach. In this approach, duty holders would have to submit a notification per article (or per complex object, i.e. objects made of two or more articles3). If an article contains several Candidate List substances above 0.1% w/w., all of those substances would be notified together, as part of the notification for the article supplied. The information to be submitted to ECHA would therefore be structured around articles/complex objects that are supplied in EU. Duty holders include EU producers, distributors, retailers and importers of articles and complex objects, as well as EU assemblers of complex objects.
