The company is concerned that using only estimates of how much electrical equipment is placed on the market in the business sector rather than the household sector could mean a flawed producer responsibility system.
Under Europe's Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive, producers are to take responsibility for the collection and recycling of waste electronics. The government is still working on UK regulations, which it said last week should be complete by summer 2005 (see letsrecycle.com story).
” Electrical items can be sold to employees, or given to charities, and this will see them coming out of the market as household WEEE when they actually went in as business electronics. “
– Kirstie McIntyre, Hewlett Packard
Producers have different collection obligations for WEEE arising among households and that which is generated by businesses.
The DTI's preferred approach suggests that producers should make “reasonable estimates, capable of corroboration” to calculate how much of their WEEE goes to households and how much is sold to businesses.
But Kirstie McIntyre, Hewlett Packard's WEEE Directive programme manager, has warned that this system is flawed because waste electronics can “migrate” from the business sector into the household stream.
Dr McIntyre said: “With smaller business to business items, there is a distinct possibility that they could be passed into the household stream. Electrical items can be sold to employees, or given to charities, and this will see them coming out of the market as household WEEE when they actually went in as business electronics.”
Preferable
Hewlett Packard is concerned that the DTI's approach will not be accurate enough to be entirely fair. Dr McIntyre told letsrecycle.com that a more preferable approach would be to classify all smaller items of WEEE – such as personal computers – as household WEEE, deducting items from a producer's household obligation when it is taken back to the producer by a business.
She explained: “Each sector should sit down and decide which products definitely are business to business electronic items. Servers that are the size of a room are not going to be bought by an employee or inadvertently passed on to the general public so these can be confirmed as business to business items.
“Any items that could feasibly be passed into the household stream would be classed as household goods, regardless of whether they are sold to households,” Dr McIntyre said. “If a business returns an electronic product to a producer, the producer can then discount that product from the producer's household responsibility.”
Budget
The possibility of business electronics migrating to the household stream was strengthened by this year's Budget, in which the government stated that items including computers bought from companies by their employees will no longer be subject to a tax.
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The Budget states: “From 6 April 2005, there will be no income tax charge if an employee pays the market value to buy computers or bicycles previously loaned to them by their employer. The change reverses existing legislation that can give rise to a tax charge where assets are transferred to an employee and have previously been provided as benefits.”
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