EICTA turns its nose up at WEEE proposals

EICTA HAS VOICED concerns that the proposed revisions to the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive ‘encourages’ producers to be made financially responsible for household collection and has set unreachable targets.

Mark MacGann, Director General of EICTA, the industry body representing the information and communications technology and consumer electronics industries in the European Union said, “The latest proposal defines a set of unrealistic and unreachable targets because it does not take into account the fact that a market for recyclables already exists.”

He claims that the Commission has seriously underestimated the volume of electrical and electronic waste collected and recycled by non-producer organisations.

Although 80 percent of the electrical and electronic waste has been effectively collected and recycled, 61 percent is still recycled outside of the producer-funded WEEE systems.

MacGann says that this is due to simple economic laws of supply and demand as there is value in recyclable material.

“When recycled materials prices are competitive, it will be virtually impossible for producers to get hold of enough waste to meet the proposed collection targets,” he continues.

The Commission’s latest revisions were aimed at enabling municipalities and business end-users to adopt a speculative approach and sell WEEE waste to producers at a later date – this would mean producers would have to comply with the collection targets.

However, the assumption on recyclable waste within the UK WEEE system has already led to massive increase in the costs of recycling.

EICTA is mainly concerned that the Commission proposal could make producers responsible for household collection.

If producers had to finance their own collection costs however, it would massively increase the costs of compliance with absolutely no environmental benefit.

Furthermore, the actual success of meeting these collection targets depends on the availability of collection points and the volume of WEEE being generated by the end user.

EICTA proposes that Municipalities should retain the primary responsibility for collection; that the Directive should better define the responsibilities of all stakeholders involved in the collection of WEEE; and that all recycled WEEE should be reported to the central waste authorities in each country. µ