Electronic waste has always been the less-popular side of so-called Green IT. Everyone is happy to get behind the idea of saving electricity in the data centre and on desktops – it’s also saving money. But when it comes do cleaning up after ourselves, well, that involves work and is likely to cost.
Like so many other things, the real drivers are in the community of people concerned about the issue, though strong regulations are a nice-to-have. Which is why we are disappointed with the watering down of the EU’s directive on WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment).
The current directive has done little to alter the amount of IT junk that is tossed into landfill, or shipped to toxic disposal sites in the developing world, and now, by reducing the target for the amount of European electronics that will be recycled, the directive is likely to flounder further.
The EU Parliament approved a target of recycling 85 percent of the WEEE produced in Europe, but the new draft directive only sets a target of 45 percent. That won’t come into force for four years – and the use of the word “target” here gives a flavour of the provisional and unenforceable nature of the Directive.
The UK’s WEEE Advisory Board was abolished by the government in a typically futile gesture (the board’s budget was of the order of thousands of pounds). Despite this, the group continued, and has produced a standard for the reuse of computer equipment – PAS 141.
Now, it may seem inconsistent to be sceptical of one directive with a silly name (WEEE) and welcome a formal specification whose name is a number. But we are talking here of two different kinds of bureaucracy.
The EU is trying to push down from on high, without any real idea of what its targets mean in practice, or how they might be implemented, only a general feeling that something “should be done” by those other people who aren’t bureaucrats.
Meanwhile, the re-use standard has come up from the grass-roots, created by people who make it their business to re-use and repurpose old equipment.
PAS 141 is not without critics, of course. Some say it will make it harder to reuse PCs, as the test will cost money to apply. Others simply believe that technology moves on so fast that anyone trying to promote the use of older hardware will have an uphill struggle.
For instance, Microsoft’s IE9 won’t run on PCs that only have Windows XP. The company says this is to give the best experience, but it’s also part of its ongoing – and anti-environmental – campaign to kill off a product which many people feel is still good enough for them.
We think, that re-using old desktop kit is something any organisation should consider, especially in days when many people are storing and processing much less on their office PC or laptop using the cloud and desktop virtualisation.
We welcome the new WEEE directive when it is finally finished, and however strong its targets are, we wish it support, and hope it has teeth. But we also welcome the measures emerging from companies doing the real work, and suggest that IT managers should do what they can to increase tech re-use and recycling.
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Peter,
The latest version of the WEEE Directive was released some 3 days ago by the EU and to be frank, although as you said above, it doesn't go far enough on recovery targets, it is really only the tip of the iceberg and doesn't overly reflect what actually happens inside the UK in particular. Over the past 5 years, we've monitored the volume of emails we receive, requesting access to old IT equipment for export. At the beginning of the Financial Crisis, we recorded an average of 4 emails per day, asking to buy equipment, whatever it's state, for export and recycling in develoiping countries (quite literally shipping out toxic waste). This has dropped by close to 100% in the past five years and reflects moreover the echange rate than it does the impact of the WEEE directive. However, it will allow for a shake up of the industry as they adapt during lean times, removing the export trade from the "recycling" loop. Recovery and recycling rates in the UK are again skewed as WEEE falls to a certain extent under the "scrap" or "Rag and bone man" industry, which although technically outside the legislation of WEEE, contributes to our economy. However, such WEEE is not counted towards our country's targets for EU compliance, meaning that it isn't recorded. The same goes for those collecting and recycling WEEE that are not registered AATFs (only ATFs or T11 exempt). Somehow, these figures need to be fed back into the larger picture, before we can really say that the majority of WEEE is either landfilled or exported.