On September 26, 2020, Legislative Decree 116/2020, which redefines the rules regarding waste and amends the previous Legislative Decree. 152/06 in order to implement the European directives of the Circular Economy Package.
In this article we will clarify what are the important novelties in the waste and packaging sector.
The 5 main new features:
1) NEW DEFINITION OF MUNICIPAL WASTE
With the new decree, the definition of Urban Waste has been extended to include undifferentiated and separately collected waste from other sources and thus also from some non-households. Many wastes, from special, will thus become urban when they are “similar in nature and composition to household waste.”
2) CERTIFICATE OF SUCCESSFUL DISPOSAL
Companies are not obliged to choose the public operator to dispose of the municipal waste they produce, but they will still have to submit a certificate from the chosen private operator.
Non-household users who choose the public operator will be bound for the next 5 years. In the case of the private one, however, this constraint is not provided.
3) EXTENDED PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY.
Producer responsibility is extended to “any natural or legal person who professionally develops, manufactures, processes, treats, sells or imports products,” so as to encourage the design of products that reduce environmental impacts and facilitate waste recovery and disposal.
4) RENTRI
RENTRI stands for the National Electronic Waste Tracking Register and will be the new waste tracking system.
This system will replace the loading and unloading register, waste identification forms and the MUD.
Thanks to RENTRI, members will thus be able to ensure that waste management data is always up-to-date and quickly transmitted to supervisory bodies, but its start date is not yet known.
5) LOADING AND UNLOADING REGISTER
Until RENTRI is implemented, the obligation to fill in waste loading and unloading registers remains in force, but now under the new decree they are excluded:
- Initial producers of nonhazardous waste who have no more than ten employees;
- Companies that collect and transport their own nonhazardous waste, as in Article 212, paragraph 8.
- Farmers referred to in Art. 2135 of the Civil Code with an annual turnover not exceeding € 8000.
The timeframe for record keeping is also reduced from five to three years.
Same timeframe is reported for retention of forms by transmitting the fourth copy via PEC.
For more details, see D.leg 116/2020: https://www.gazzettaufficiale.it/eli/id/2020/09/11/20G00135/sg