General
This directive, like many other European compliance directives, is not directly applicable, but requires legislative action from European Member States. Though European directives are legislation, European Union Member States must comply with them to avoid legal action that the European Commission can bring to bear if they don't. However Member States retain some freedom by what means they implement a directive's requirements.
The battery directive has the objective of improving the environmental performance of batteries by regulating the use of certain substances in the manufacture of batteries e.g., lead, lead-acid, mercury, cadmium, etc., and setting standards for the waste management of these batteries. Many European member states have passed battery and waste management laws. Among those nations are: Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, and others. Finland and Denmark have supported a total prohibition of battery cadmium. Belgium and Sweden have battery recycling rates of 59% and 55%. With the finalization of the 2006 Battery Directive, European states now have specific guidelines to which to make rules to comport.
Read more about this topic: Battery Directive
Famous quotes containing the word general:
“Every gazette brings accounts of the untutored freaks of the wind,—shipwrecks and hurricanes which the mariner and planter accept as special or general providences; but they touch our consciences, they remind us of our sins. Another deluge would disgrace mankind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“We raised a simple prayer
Before we left the spot,
That in the general mowing
That place might be forgot;
Or if not all so favored,
Obtain such grace of hours
That none should mow the grass there
While so confused with flowers.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)