Green IT Toolkit
Story: Tech recycling law finally arrives
Worry not
Don't fret about being selfish and don't worry about cheap secondhand stuff disappearing. The WEEE directive is a crock. It is, in my opinion and others', a waste of considerable effort and money to no useul end. It has cost us considerable time and effort in weighing all of our products again. Again because each package contains some parts eligible for WEEE and some items not. So the existing weight, for Customs purposes, is wrong for WEEE purposes, so it all had to be done again.
Additionally, we have to pay a significant set-up fee to our "service provider" and an annual fee for their services (demanding reports from us about goods sold to businesses "B2B" and customers "B2C"). What we actually pay for recycling of the goods is a mere £4 per tonne. It really is not worth the effort.
I will feel no additional compulsion to recycle anything because of this scheme - I recycle stuff at the end of its useful life anyway, if there is a means to do so. In fact, it's always better to prolong the useful life of electrical and most other goods because of the carbon cost of manufacturing replacements.
I seriously wonder whether raw materials are recovered from electrical goods. Ok, metal cabinets from washing machines etc but not the many metals and alloys from computer components - I don't believe it.
So feel good about old stuff but not so good about the WEEE directive.
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