IT-Green is currently undergoing some major changes and I guess it's fair to say that being one of 2 directors, I'm in the driving seat (not to blow my own trumpet or anything) . Lets get one thing straight from the start, running a Business is not easy.... it's fun yes, but definately not easy. Add to that the following and we can see why recycling WEEE is a tough nut to crack:

IT and telecoms is a tough field to work in, particularly if reselling equipment (new or old). Given that you can pick up new kit from Dell for £299 all in, it's no wonder that your local independant IT reseller goes out of business every 12 months.

UK legisltation is extremely tough for recycling companies. Recycling of weee means reselling it as well as dismantling it. Currently there's no sure fire way to seperate out the various compnents of a computer except by hand. Larger operations shred the lot- but where's the material recovery- it end up as a mis-match of everything and your can't recover any materials from that!

So, I've had to go get us a big licence to meet the demand for our service. The cost? Quite a lot- straight out of the bottom line. What it allows us to do? Recycle 5000 tonnes of computers. Doesn't sound like much I know, but I reckon it's near on 250,000 systems per annum!

Here's the crunch. I'm not too sure if there's enough infrastructure in the UK to supply that ammount of kit. There's too much in-fighting in the industry at the moment and no organisation. add to that the fact it's a costly enterprise and that proper recycling companies need to charge (even when they're an AATF) and you start to see why the industry is full of cowboys undercutting the competition. Don't believe me? Well, we know that there's a few rogue traders in the industry takkiing advantage of people's lack of knowledge when it comes to recycling.