An analysis of a European hazardous waste transport registration system (EARS)

In this study a system analysis is presented for a European registration system for hazardous waste shipment notifications. The administrative procedures for the notifications according to the European Community (EC) directives are in use in several Member States, among others the Netherlands and Belgium. The new system should enable efficient notification procedures, without the large number of forms and the delays in obtaining transit and import permissions that are currently observed. Only one form is needed for each hazardous waste transport within the EC, accompanying the transport.The system also allows the generation of compiled information for all EC Member States by using a database structure. Rather than manually administrating the information of the forms, this information is transmitted and stored electronically. With an estimated number of 100,000 transfrontier transports of hazardous waste per year in the European Community, this greatly decreases time and costs for aggregating hazardous waste transport data. This aggregated information is necessary for the implementation, evaluation and further development of a coherent EC waste management policy for hazardous waste treatment and disposal.