The European consumer standards organisation ECOS has published a position on the EU’s Circular Economy Action Plan, calling to “exclude the use of substances of concern systematically, starting with endocrine disruptors, flame retardants, fluorinated compounds and toxic pesticides”. The organisation wants Europe to ban these substances through a “zero pollution and toxic-free strategy” and through “product design requirements”. ECPS proposes to “build on the Ecodesign Directive ban on halogenated flame retardants (pinfa note: this only concerns, to date, TV enclosures) to ban chemicals in products “by class and groups of chemicals” in coordination with REACH. pinfa regrets such calls for blanket bans of all flame retardants, which cannot be justified given that many PIN FRs have no significant health or environmental risk, and note that the blanket ban call is contradicted by the proposal to consider groups of chemicals.
“The next circular economy action plan: Priority measures for the European Commission”, ECOS, 10th December 2019 https://ecostandard.org/publications/the-next-circular-economy-action-plan-priority-measures-for-the-european-commission/