Waste shipment out of Japan for treatment in European world-class facilities
Committee:
Materials
Published:
Japan has introduced a three-year notification period for waste shipment procedure, which makes situation better than little time after agreement. However, the notification process of Basel waste is still very slow due to inefficient procedures. For instance, for transit and passing countries, Japanese authorities don’t apply the tacit consent rule toward non-OECD countries and hold the procedure until all the transit countries approve it. These complicated procedures are required even for pre-authorised facilities which benefit from extremely low risk to human health and the environment.
Recommendations
- Review the amount and type of data needed by Japanese authorities during the notification process.
- Speed up at authorities the notification process to bring it to an acceptable level similar to the speed of other
- Japanese Government should allow negative value material to leave Japan using transparent guidelines.
- Review Japanese system for waste classification to enable a closed loop system for scarce metals between Japan and Europe.
- A fast-track system between Japan and Europe should be implemented for pre-authorised facilities