July 13, 2010
The polymer industries across Europe have a severe lack of specific information about REACH – the European Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals regulations – and what they do have varies from country to country. That is the conclusion so far of a European collaborative project focusing on the REACH legislation which has produced a situation report on its way to creating an e-learning tool.
     The report lists current sources of information about the REACH legislation, as well as contact details for national help-lines. It is supported by a benchmarking survey which involved 135 detailed industry interviews, and highlights a lack of awareness or understanding of company responsibilities in more than 20 per cent of cases in countries including Italy, Portugal and Lithuania.
     The consortium of national bodies which is six months into the two-year Eur 0·5 million programme consists of three British organisations – Smithers Rapra Technology, the British Plastics Federation and Rapra Limited – together with EuPC (Belgium), Proplast (Italy), CASO (Portugal), APINI (Lithuania) and MTU Balti Keskkonnafoorum (Estonia). It has found that companies currently tend to search out information about REACH either from their national associations or from nationally-based help-desks. Information on how to communicate with suppliers was most valuable to them, but almost 80 per cent of companies found difficulty in getting advice on who should be involved with REACH from within their companies.
     The project has a website on www.polymer-reach.eu where anyone can register free of charge and download copies of the report and the benchmarking survey, and be kept up to date as the project progresses over the next 18 months.