In the summer of 2006 the film made by former United States Vice President Al Gore, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’,  sounded the clarion call not just for an increased awareness of environmental issues, but for action.   And so it may be that 2006 will be seen as the tipping point on acceptance of the need for a more environmentally-sensitive approach to life and commerce in the UK.  

Awareness has been kept high since the early 1980s by campaigners such as the Green Party but there now appears to be a concerted appetite for action in the UK; not just among consumers, but also corporate Britain as businesses strive to establish their green credentials.

In 2006 we saw companies begin to discuss publicly the spiralling power requirements for data centres - their carbon footprints - and the European Computer Manufacturers’ Association announced that it was formulating a comparative benchmark to establish how energy-efficient individual PCs and laptops are.  It is against this background of green aspirations that the European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive has passed into law.

Its legislative passage in the UK has been a long and drawn out affair that, with regular delays and consultations, and came close to a farce.  The rationale behind the delays was always to establish workable regulations through consultation with stakeholders rather than to impose a piece of ill-conceived legislation that was doomed to failure because of its inadequacies.  However for some observers, the delays created an atmosphere of uncertainty that stymied investment in the UK’s recycling infrastructure and left organisations operating in those countries that acted more precipitously in implementing the directive with a competitive advantage.  But with the legislation finally being laid before parliament in December, can UK industry now move smoothly forward to meet its obligations?

Like many smaller manufacturers, Cheshire-based Newbury Data, which makes magnetic encoding printers for specialist ticketing applications,  now feels that the uncertainty has passed.  Engineering manager Mark Lymer says:  ‘We were keen to establish what exactly was expected of us and what processes we needed to put in place.  One problem that had existed in the market is that there seemed to be a good deal of speculation and rumours.  Now that we have that knowledge, we can start actively looking for a partner that best meets our needs as an organisation but we know that we have to move quickly to meet the deadline.’

Despite industry fears that the prolonged consultation period would inevitably lead to vested interests watering down the final regulations, Tom Meney, a specialist environmental compliance consultant with Rathroy Consulting, is keen to dispel the myths.  ‘The final regulations that have emerged do appear to be well defined and are fairly comprehensive with all the angles covered.  There are some loose ends to be tidied up such as giving the final approval to authorised treatment facilities, but these are administrational details,’ he adds.

‘The question of licences does still have to be resolved with regard to how Authorised Treatment Facilities (ATF) will become Approved Authorised Treatment Facilities (AATF),’ notes Stephen Daughtrey, commercial director of Sheffield-based Bruce Electronics Recycling.  ‘As well as meeting a number of environmental criteria, this approval means companies will be vetted to ensure that processes are in place to provide audit data to compliance schemes,’ he explains.

Paul James, head of WEEE services at DHL Exel Supply Chain, believes that the licensing issues will be addressed before July.  ‘In the background, the Environment Agency is working to ensure that companies do have all the necessary approvals before the deadlines.  I do not see that we will arrive at a similar situation to the one that faced industry with fridge recycling.’  In 2002 confusion over changes to legislation that required hazardous CFCs to be safely removed from fridges resulted in huge quantities of old machines being dumped.

While from a legislative point of view all the pieces are starting to fall slowly into place, perhaps the single biggest challenge that is faced is getting the message out into the marketplace and ensuring that everyone affected by the legislation - both producers and users - is aware of their obligations and the timescales involved.  Global logistics giant DHL is set to address the lack of knowledge in the marketplace by holding a series of roadshows throughout the country in February as Paul James explains.  ‘Our seminars have been organised to help businesses quickly gain an understanding of this potentially complex issue.  As a compliance scheme, we do have a commercial interest in raising awareness of WEEE regulations but more importantly, with 100,000 customers in the UK alone, we have a duty to provide an information service to those customers, to help them in meeting all their obligations and the role that DHL, with our logistics expertise, can play in ultimately protecting their brand.’

James is in no doubt as to the scale of the problem, revealing that many companies believe that the regulations simply do not apply to their particular organisation.  ‘Some companies are convinced that because the product they manufacture is not specifically listed then they are immune but the inclusion of products into the wording of the legislation is designed to provide examples and not serve as a definitive list,’ he explains. 

‘Businesses must also realise that there are no threshold volumes of products or a specific turnover figure below which a company is immune.  Any business that brands, imports or sells electrical products is likely to be affected by WEEE and will need to register with an approved compliance scheme before 15th March,’ he says.

As part of the registration, companies must also declare what tonnages of material they have placed on the market and this may also cause issues.  ‘While many of the larger organisations will have a suitably comprehensive management system that gives them access to figures on the mass of equipment they have placed on the market, for those companies that do not have easy access to such data, the requirement to provide such information will prove onerous and time consuming,’ James warns.

While the March deadline means that much of the thrust to raise awareness of WEEE is targeted at producers, Tom Meney is concerned that business users are also blissfully unaware of what is expected of them under the regulations.  ‘While there are a number of roadshows with both the Department for Trade and Industry and the Environment Agency which invite producers to assess their obligations, there is a distinct lack of visibility of WEEE among business end users, and this is particularly true with smaller organisations that have no understanding that they too have obligations or the solutions that are available to them,’ Meney warns.

Business users of any electrical or electronic device need to pay careful consideration to the date 13 August 2005.  The responsibility for the collection and treatment of any products placed on the market after this date lies with the producer although from now on the act does allow for producers and business users to come to alternative financial arrangements as a part of the supply negotiations. 

Any items that were placed on the market before 13 August 2005 come under the heading of ‘historic WEEE’ and business users are faced with two options.  Equipment being replaced on a like-for-like basis can be collected and disposed of by the new supplying producer but if equipment is simply being disposed of and not replaced, then the business itself is responsible for the costs of treatment.
With the rapid refresh rates within the IT industry comes the option of the re-use and redeployment of hardware assets so that even with current market trends towards programmes such as server vitualisation and consolidation, not all equipment being disposed of should be automatically considered as waste. 

Gary Griffiths, environmental and quality manager at Essex-based IT disposal specialist RDC, suggests that companies will be taking a sensible approach to their obligations.  ‘Many companies will have to check asset registers or purchase invoices to determine whether any product was purchased before or after 13 August 2005 but I think we will see organisations take a pragmatic approach to disposal.  If a cost is involved, then they will avail themselves of any take back scheme that is on offer and if a value can be realised from the items, then they will talk to an organisation such as RDC,’ he says.

With deadlines looming, understandably much of the debate focuses on meeting the legislative burden within the UK, however now might be a time to consider a more altruistic view of the impact of the WEEE directive.  While the dream of a single market in Europe is still tightly held in many quarters, the different interpretations of the WEEE directive highlights that the nations within Europe still cannot be regarded as a homogenous entity by the rest of the world.  Tom Meney explains.  ‘Perhaps the greatest area for confusion and cause for concern exists with producer companies overseas, in the United States or China for example.  As the interpretation of the WEEE regulations devolved to the member countries of the EU, differences do exist and any overseas producer must have a market to market understanding of their responsibilities, because a producer’s obligations in other parts of Europe are certainly not consistent  with those that exist within the UK,’ he warns.

The lack of harmony in the regulations across Europe is not just an administrative nightmare for companies and is starting to have financial implications for companies trading throughout Europe.  ‘Different standards of treatment across Europe can cause problems,’ explains Gary Griffiths.  ‘The definitions of best practice in some Scandinavian countries do mean that recycling operations there require more dismantling and not only does this expose operatives to greater hazards but there is also a cost implication,’ he reveals.

‘In some countries, only manufacturers can offer schemes and in others, monopolistic compliance schemes exist and in these countries the cost of compliance is higher as the competition does not exist to drive down costs.  The fact that 25 variations of the same legislation exist throughout Europe is an issue and while the larger companies have the resources and the structure in place to be able to manage compliance on a country by country basis, for the smaller producer it is massive burden,’ says Paul James.

‘There will be a review in 2008 looking at the implementations of the schemes across Europe and while harmonisation of the regulations would be wonderful, I do not see it happening.  Vested local interests and lobbying have added another layer of complexity to ever getting a completely level playing field across Europe,’ James notes.

While European treatment facilities may have enjoyed a head start in investing in recycling technologies as the UK implementation was delayed, companies in the UK are now moving swiftly ahead.  Following the legislation being placed before parliament in December Sims Recycling Solutions announced an expansion of its Newport facility in South Wales to meet with anticipated volumes and CKS Solutions unveiled its plans for a new centre at Cinderford in Gloucestershire in November 2006.  Bruce Electronics Recycling, which invested over £350,000 last year to install machinery to address the specific demands of recycling monitors and screens based around cathode ray tube (CRT) technology, is set to continue its investment in plant.  ‘The CRT processing system that we installed last year has been a great success and is currently operating in excess of our predicted volumes of screens,’ says Stephen Daughtrey.  ‘We are now looking to install a new machine to cope with the volumes of plastics.  Now that the market is seeing increased demand for used plastics as a result of variable oil prices which has affected the price of virgin plastics, investment in such plant is worthwhile,’ he adds.

There are not many people involved in the electrical and electronics recycling industry who fail to appreciate the sheer scale of the task that business is facing with the implementation of the WEEE directive.  As producers comes to terms with their obligations before the March registration deadline, business users must now start to address the issues of dealing with end of life and surplus to requirement electronic and electrical equipment.  Opportunities do exist for organisations to demonstrate their sense of corporate responsibility by proactively addressing the issue but the fact that so few business fully users understand how WEEE relates to their day to day activities remains an uncomfortable truth.  Without doubt the implementation of WEEE will be challenging but after the years of delay, the UK must now face up to the fact that the legislation is upon us all.