At a recent Parliamentary debate, Mr Meacher gave a wait-and-see response to Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, David Lidington on what will be done to persuade the private sector to develop alternative uses for waste plastics such as video recorder casing. Mr Lidington described such elements of electrical waste as having “no available use at the moment”.
Mr Meacher gave no direct answer about waste plastics, although he said: “There are two or three years before 2005 to 2006, when the directive on waste form the electrical and electronic equipment comes into force, and one means of ensuring that the technology is put in place is the pressure exerted by the directive. It is right that electrical and electronic goods should not be landfilled. This is not an appropriate form of environmental disposal and it is clearly right that these should be recycled and reused.
Problem plastics
However, according to some plastic recyclers, plastics might be a problem to recycle and reuse under the demands of the WEEE directive.
“The situation with the plastics waste stream in WEEE is complicated,” said Andrew Simmons chief executive of plastics recycling organisation, Recoup.
“Markets for the materials are not readily available. However, as noted there is growing international technology development to deal with specific streams of materials. I believe that the main opportunities are in recycling
post-shredder residue plastics and in dismantling of certain large appliances.
“Also certain WEEE plastics could be used as an element of,
for example, 'timber replacement' products. There are also developments in the feedstock recycling sector that are relevant to WEEE plastics. It will undoubtedly be a particular challenge to recycle plastics from this
sector and much of the effort will need to be focussed on separation technologies and market development for recyclate from this sector.
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