If you haven’t heard the term WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment), you will.
The government is due to introduce The WEEE Directive in 2007.
WEEE covers lots of electrical goodies from batteries to PCs to fridges to vending machines, kettles and much more, and it will be illegal for any business in the UK to put any WEEE in their normal waste, or in skips. The law will state “Thou Shalt Recycle”.
The first part of this legislation was introduced a couple of years ago making it illegal for most businesses to put fluorescent tubes or discharge lamps in their waste. In short, the powder in these lamps and tubes contains mercury, and although there is only about a teaspoonful of mercury in a thousand tubes, the fact that it’s there at all classifies these as hazardous waste. None of the landfill sites in the UK can knowingly accept them, and they must be properly recycled, a process which each business must be able to prove by producing the relevant Waste Transfer notes upon request. This is a chargeable service, and the psychics will already know that many businesses don’t comply. Non compliance can be policed by the waste companies fining businesses who they catch, or dumping the consignment of waste back at their door. The DOE can also do visits etc, but this is rare.
The WEEE directive itself should have far reaching consequences, as it will be much harder to hide office equipment than the odd bulb.
The directive also places stipulations on manufacturers of this equipment, and “New WEEE” (WEEE manufactured after introduction) must be fully recycled with a minimum of 80% being recoverable, and all hazardous components must be included within this amount. Mercury is popular in electronic components, as is arsenic.
Again this recycling is a chargeable service, but the costs are not massive, a PC (monitor & base unit) will be approx £15, and things like vending machines, gaming machines and commercial fridges and freezers are about £120 - £200 depending on size. Already many contractors are starting to build in costs for correct disposal of “Historic WEEE” (old equipment) when pricing refurbishments for offices, supermarkets, etc.
Interestingly, I know of one supermarket chain who had over 2000 waste commercial fridges and freezers in storage after their national facelift programme. A you can see, there’s a lot of WEEE about.
If you’ve survived this far, here’s the bit that will affect the man in the street: the government is looking at building in the cost of the recycling into the purchase cost of all relevant goods, including domestic products, to try and stop people dodging their recycling obligation. The upshot of this would be that when you buy a TV for example, the retailer you buy from will have to provide the facility to recycle not only your old TV, but the packaging as well. You will not be surprised to hear that they have yet to sort out the logistics of this part of their vision.
Iain Ross
Weblinks
If you put WEEE into your search engine, you'll find a good number of interesting sites. One of particuler interest is http://www.weeeman.org/. This is a 'man' built of WEEE, by The Royal Society of Arts Manufacturers & Commerce, and Canon Europe to raise awareness on the subject: a novel idea, reminding me of some bad 80s sci fi movies!
