The new scheme – GAMBICA B2B Compliance – was announced yesterday by the trade association GAMBICA, which represents over 200 UK companies in the instrumentation, control, automation and laboratory technology industry. It has been launched as the government begins its third and final consultation on the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive (see letsrecycle.com story).
GAMBICA's chief executive Geoff Young explained: “The Association has established a not-for-profit company, GAMBICA B2B Compliance, to oversee the compliance scheme's development and operation that, we believe, will make an important contribution to achieving UK's compliance with the Directive.”
Under the WEEE Directive producers are responsible for the recycling of waste electrical equipment. Compliance schemes have already been launched for manufacturers and importers of household electrical goods to meet their financial obligations (see letsrecycle.com WEEE homepage).
But Peter Lawson, deputy director at GAMBICA, said that although much of the legislation focuses on household WEEE, there are specific issues affecting companies in the industrial sectors. “The business-to-business sector has been left on its own to decide as to how to do its recycling,” he said.
Costs
“For our sector, a manufacturer may have a high value but very small quantity of equipment that it exports to countries across Europe. The costs involved in collection and recycling is very, very expensive compared to the high volume of household products,” Mr Lawson added.
GAMBICA B2B Compliance will focus on three categories of WEEE – category 3 IT and telecommunications, category 8 medical devices, and category 9 monitoring and control instruments. Together these categories cover a diverse range of equipment including computers, freezers, laboratory equipment, radiotherapy equipment and smoke detectors.
Mr Lawson said that there is likely to be some overlapping areas with household WEEE, especially for IT equipment where a company may give outdated computers to its staff for use at home.
There is also a potential problem with identifying and classifying equipment, Mr Lawson explained. “People in the waste sector that don't have that technical knowledge will be saying 'well what is it?'” he said. “Although most of the general public can identify consumer products they have great difficulty identifying industrial products.”
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