EU:NEW E-WASTE RECYCLING LAWS BEGIN

[Anonymous]

New e-waste recycling laws begin
A
much-delayed law that makes British producers and importers of
electronic goods responsible for the recycling of their products has
come into force.The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)
Directive requires 4kg of “e-waste” to be recycled per
person.Manufacturers have to fund recycling schemes, while retailers
must offer take-back services to customers.The legislation was supposed
to be operational by August 2005 but was delayed by “major
difficulties”.”E-waste”, which includes PCs, games consoles, microwaves
and washing machines, is the fastest-growing form of rubbish in the
European Union.

The UK produces an estimated 1.2m tonnes of e-waste each year, most of which has been ending up in landfill sites.

Beyond the shelf
“I
think this is an absolutely great piece of legislation,” said Jonathan
Wright, a senior supply chain executive for Accenture, the management
consultancy.”In the past, all that companies focused on was getting
products made and getting them out to customers,” he explained.”Now,
organisations are having to think about what is going to happen after
the product has been sold.”The WEEE directive entered the statute book
at the beginning of the year, but full producer responsibility was
delayed until 1 July.Under the legislation, retailers selling
electrical goods are obliged to offer customers a free in-store
take-back service on a “like for like” basis, or help fund the
expansion of a network of WEEE collection points.Comet, one of the UK’s
largest electrical retailers, is among the companies funding the
upgrading of local authority-run recycling facilities.The company’s
managing director, Hugh Harvey, welcomed the belated introduction of
the law.”We believe this legislation is a really positive initiative
which will make it much easier for consumers to recycle their
electrical waste,” he said.

Collective responsibility
The
directive has also required manufacturers to join one of 37 “Producer
Compliance Schemes” operating in the UK.The schemes, which are
monitored by the Environment Agency, collect and recycle the e-waste on
behalf of the companies.”The amount we are responsible for is
calculated by looking at the amount we sell,” explained HP’s takeback
compliance manager, Kirstie McIntyre.”We report to our compliance
scheme, who in turn reports to the Environment Agency on our behalf.”We
tell them how much IT we sold to consumers and business customers last
year; the Environment Agency then adds up all the sales by the major
manufacturers and works out percentage responsibility for each
company.”However, Mrs McIntyre voiced concern that the EU directive did
not offer the same incentives as WEEE legislation in Japan.”What they
have done in Japan is introduce a more individual producers’
responsibility approach,” she said.”Instead of HP being responsible for
any old IT and recycling it, we are only responsible for HP equipment.”

This
had a number of additional environmental benefits, she added.”Most of
the environmental impact in complex manufactured goods is decided at
the design stage.”If we design our products to be more recyclable at
the end-of-life stage, we not only reap the economic benefits but also
the design decisions that we have made”Why should we make [components]
easier to remove when we are getting everybody else’s laptop back”At
the end of the day, we have shareholders and we have to make a very
strong business case for any changes that we make.”At the moment, we do
have design changes that we can make, but we cannot make the business
case stack up because we do not get enough of our own products
back.”The WEEE Directive is scheduled to be reviewed in 2008, five
years after the EU first agreed to implement legislation to tackle the
growing problem of e-waste ending up in landfill sites.

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July 10, 2007 at 12:20 PM