WEEE (Computer) recycling toolkit
IT-Green is a (Computer / telecoms recycling) (WEEE compliant) recycling company, covering the whole of the UK. It currently operates with a view to provding UK businesses with a safe (licenced and trackable) and secure (certified confidential waste destruction) method of disposing of their IT (e-waste) hardware. Directors anticipate Authorised Treatment Facility status (ATF) by Oct 2008 and AATF (Approved Authorised treatment facility) by Jan 2009. If you're a manufacturer of eee, you need the latter (through a PCS- Producer compliance scheme). If you are a personal user (member of the general public) wanting to recycle your hardware, you can drop it off with us (in Cambridge) or search for a DCF (Designated collection facility)
Wednesday 15 October 2008, 3:30 PM
E-waste strife, recycling computers ethically
The thing is, what was once one of the driving forces behind the idea of a psuedo licenced recycler offering their service for free might have just died a very quick and sudden death. The scrap metal market, upon which a number of recycling companies have depended has literally died over night. Scrap steel prices have plummeted from £200 per tonne to £70- given that you need 300 empty computer cases to make a tonne, the return on work invested is now pretty poor.
Another potential avenue- that of export of recycled computers to developing countries is coming under fire from the Environment Agency and Customs and Excise. The export of WEEE (computers, monitors etc) has long been a controversial subject, with a number of recyclers using export as a way to get rid of non working, very old equipment quickly- and making a quick wedge from it as well.
Although the ports are being policed, there are still loopholes in the whole idea. Export within Europe is still permitted and e-waste is flowing steadily through Cyprus and then onto developing countries.
I'm hoping (in a sick kind of way) that a global economic meltdown might just put a stop to the export of computer waste, it'll become too costly to buy at the other end. Saying all that, with the drop in the economy here and the need to dispose of e-waste, no matter the economic climate, many may just opt for a drop in sale price and export anyway. Then again, our obsolete computer waste sells in developing Countries in $USD, so right now, an exporter (approved or otherwise) can get more bang for his/ her buck.
I guess looking at the whole picture, we'll now see who's in this game for the long haul and who will move on to the next big idea.
PreviousComments on this post
What's with scrapping the p4 laptops? A lot of them are putting 2 core chips running a 1.6ghz to shame in terms of speed.
Anyway, wouldn't they be useful for upgrading those small business that are caught in the time warp of windows 2000? If not, then surely they'd be appreciated in the developing world.
As for people trying to offload broken computers onto developing nations, shame on them.
One thing that would need to be looked out for is old workplace computers being channeled through council recycling plants, easy enough for anyone sneaky enough to do.
