5. Discussion and conclusions
Our experience with the above cases shows, not only the legal complexity, but also that the environmental and human health risks of hazardous chemicals have not yet been fully identified and understood from a circular economy perspective. Preliminary analyses revealed that problems may arise when (potentially) hazardous substances such as SVHCs, or POPs are retained in the material cycles and re-enter the technosphere or the environment in new and unexpected ways. One of the possibilities for an improved risk management strategy for dealing with hazardous chemicals is to explicitly address the re-use and re-entrance of chemicals in material chains when these chemicals are being registered for access to the market. For this, amongst others, new exposure scenarios (e.g. REACH SPERCs) have to be developed based on our anticipations of the chemicals pathways which might exist in circular economy applications. The way REACH is currently designed, however, means that the responsibility of the registrant stops at the waste stage (end of life of the registered chemical). Especially in cases where chemicals are incorporated in materials, recovery becomes increasingly important in a circular economy. After recovery a new life cycle is initiated under the responsibility of the recovery operator who has the obligation of registering said chemical and hence has to ensure all uses downstream in his supply chain are adequately controlled. In practice, the recovery operator is allowed to simply refer to existing registration(s) of the recovered chemical and will experience legal uncertainty regarding the need for him to develop exposure scenarios for all his downstream uses.
