The UK has until August 2004 to implement the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive. The Directive will bring in producer responsibility in 2005 for waste electronics with collection, recycling and re-use targets to be reached by 2006.
A significant portion of the UK's compliance is likely to see the government setting a Duty of Care on all businesses to recycle any unwanted electronics. At the moment, a number of community-based organisations in the UK take unwanted electronics from companies, refurbish them, then provide them at low cost to vulnerable sectors of society.
Speaking to letsrecycle.com, Recycle-IT, one of the largest social enterprise refurbishment organisations in Europe, warned that the sector would be under threat if the government did not promote re-use as part of its implementation of the Directive.
Michele Rigby, managing director of Luton-based Recycle-IT, said that if the legislation gave companies the cheaper option of sending equipment to be shredded into granulated materials, it would mean refurbishment groups would no longer be able to compete.
Ms Rigby said: “We don't know what the government will put in the legislation yet, but if the legislation goes down the route of granulating the equipment, at for example 10 a tonne, as opposed to manually dealing with equipment for 60 a tonne, why would you do anything other than send that equipment to be shredded?”
The Recycle-IT managing director was in London for the Green Card sustainability and green procurement conference organised by business-to-business electronics manufacturer Kyocera Mita.
She said: “Social enterprise and recycling have always gone hand in hand – it's about jobs, working for the environment and the local economy. But if the government doesn't push re-use in their implementation of the legislation, this could be it for us. It's going to have a huge effect on the social economy.”
Targets
During the conference, delegates learned that bizarrely, the re-use of whole items of electronic equipment does not count towards re-use and recycling targets set by the European Directive. Only dismantling equipment to re-use components counts towards re-use targets, because the Directive deems whole re-use to be a commercial enterprise.
Recycle-IT currently handles around 395 tonnes of material each year, with 66% of that being refurbished, 32.5% recycled by Leeds-based Silver Lining and only 1.5% going to landfill. The organisation employs 12 people, with 6 training places and two voluntary places. Financially, it is 93% self-sufficient with 7% of its finance coming from Luton-based engineering firm SKF (UK) Ltd.
Recycle-IT is currently discussing the possibility of setting up a new venture, WEEE-Disassemble-IT, to respond to the new UK regulations, Ms Rigby said. However, this will very much depend on how the government implements the regulations.
Software
The biggest headache at the moment in cutting down on the amount of waste IT equipment produced in the UK was software, Ms Rigby said. The reason companies need to get rid of equipment is usually software-related, not hardware related.
“These computers can go on being used for years – it's the software that's the problem. The new software coming out needs ever more powerful equipment to run it – and yet most people just need a computer for the spreadsheet, word processor and email, which doesn't need much,” she said.
Microsoft makes it particularly difficult for refurbishers of computers to re-distribute unwanted machines, she added. For each machine donated by a company, Microsoft would require a signed form declaring that its software had been bought legitimately.
“One of our donors has given us 8,000 machines over three years. No one in any organisation wants to sign 8,000 forms,” Ms Rigby said.
As well as the Luton head office, Recycle-IT has offices in Norwich and Vienna, and is also working to provide equipment for the ex-Soviet Republic of Kyrgyzstan.
Ms Rigby said: “One of our most important projects at the moment is sending PCs to Kyrgyzstan. Our aim is to provide every school there with 10 computers, as well as access to the internet for libraries, the elderly and computers for local authorities.”
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