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  BBC 3 Jul 07
The mechanics of e-waste recycling
By Mark Kinver

BBC 1 Jul 07
Delayed e-waste law enters force

A much-delayed law that makes British producers and importers of electronic goods responsible for the recycling of their products has come into force.

The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive requires 4kg of "e-waste" to be recycled per person. Manufacturers have to fund recycling schemes, while retailers must offer take-back services to customers.

The legislation was supposed to be operational by August 2005 but was delayed by "major difficulties".

"E-waste", which includes PCs, games consoles, microwaves and washing machines, is the fastest-growing form of rubbish in the European Union. The UK produces an estimated 1.2m tonnes of e-waste each year, most of which has been ending up in landfill sites.

Beyond the shelf

"I think this is an absolutely great piece of legislation," said Jonathan Wright, a senior supply chain executive for Accenture, the management consultancy.

"In the past, all that companies focused on was getting products made and getting them out to customers," he explained. "Now, organisations are having to think about what is going to happen after the product has been sold."

The WEEE directive entered the statute book at the beginning of the year, but full producer responsibility was delayed until 1 July.

Under the legislation, retailers selling electrical goods are obliged to offer customers a free in-store take-back service on a "like for like" basis, or help fund the expansion of a network of WEEE collection points.

Comet, one of the UK's largest electrical retailers, is among the companies funding the upgrading of local authority-run recycling facilities.

The company's managing director, Hugh Harvey, welcomed the belated introduction of the law. "We believe this legislation is a really positive initiative which will make it much easier for consumers to recycle their electrical waste," he said.

Collective responsibility

The directive has also required manufacturers to join one of 37 "Producer Compliance Schemes" operating in the UK. The schemes, which are monitored by the Environment Agency, collect and recycle the e-waste on behalf of the companies.

"The amount we are responsible for is calculated by looking at the amount we sell," explained HP's takeback compliance manager, Kirstie McIntyre. "We report to our compliance scheme, who in turn reports to the Environment Agency on our behalf.

"We tell them how much IT we sold to consumers and business customers last year; the Environment Agency then adds up all the sales by the major manufacturers and works out percentage responsibility for each company."

However, Mrs McIntyre voiced concern that the EU directive did not offer the same incentives as WEEE legislation in Japan.

"What they have done in Japan is introduce a more individual producers' responsibility approach," she said. "Instead of HP being responsible for any old IT and recycling it, we are only responsible for HP equipment."

This had a number of additional environmental benefits, she added. "Most of the environmental impact in complex manufactured goods is decided at the design stage. "If we design our products to be more recyclable at the end-of-life stage, we not only reap the economic benefits but also the design decisions that we have made.

"Why should we make [components] easier to remove when we are getting everybody else's laptop back.

"At the end of the day, we have shareholders and we have to make a very strong business case for any changes that we make.

"At the moment, we do have design changes that we can make, but we cannot make the business case stack up because we do not get enough of our own products back."

The WEEE Directive is scheduled to be reviewed in 2008, five years after the EU first agreed to implement legislation to tackle the growing problem of e-waste ending up in landfill sites.

Q&A: WEEE Directive

The much-delayed Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive that makes producers and importers of electronic goods responsible for recycling their products finally come into full force in the UK on 1 July.

What is the WEEE Directive?

It is a piece of legislation covering the whole of the European Union that aims to reduce the amount of electronic waste (PCs, TVs, games consoles, communications equipment, etc) from homes and businesses that end up in landfill sites. It requires member nations to collect and recycle the equivalent of 4kg of "e-waste" for every person living in the country.

Who will be affected by the new law?

Manufacturers, importers and retailers of electronic and electrical goods are obliged to put systems in place that allow customers to recycle their obsolete devices free of charge. Manufacturers and importers in the UK have to join one of 37 authorised "producer compliance schemes".

These schemes, funded by manufacturers, are responsible for ensuring the correct collection, recovery and disposal of the e-waste. The schemes have to report to the Environment Agency, which will make sure the directive's measures are enforced.

Retailers must either offer a free in-store "take-back" service on a like-for-like basis, eg. take a customer's old TV when they buy a new one, or help fund improvements to local councils' recycling facilities.

How will it affect customers?

Households are under no obligation to recycle their e-waste as far as the WEEE Directive is concerned. However, they will "discouraged" from throwing away items that contain potentially harmful substances. Instead, they will be encouraged to use the recycling facilities being offered to them through the various schemes. To help people identify electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), products that have been on the market since August 2005 will be marked with a crossed-out wheelie bin.

What equipment is covered by the directive? Below are the 10 WEEE categories, and some of the products that are included within the groups:
* Large household appliances: fridges, freezers, microwave ovens, washing machines
* Small household appliances: vacuum cleaners, toasters, coffee machines, electric toothbrushes
* IT and telecommunications equipment: PCs, laptops, monitors, keyboards, printers, cordless phones
* Consumer equipment: radios, TVs, DVD players, video recorders etc
* Lighting equipment: low-energy Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) are classified as WEEE
* Electric tools: all tools such as drills, saws, sewing machines. Only large, stationary industrial tools are exempt
* Toys, sport and leisure equipment: electric trains, game consoles, cycle computers etc
* Medical devices: implanted or infected products are exempt
* Monitoring and control devices: smoke alarms, thermostats etc
* Automated devices: this classification covers all appliances that automatically deliver products, e.g. drinks, food, money etc.

How big is the e-waste problem?

It is the fastest growing waste stream in the European Union. In the UK, an estimated 1.2 million tonnes of e-waste is produced each year. While the WEEE directive requires about 20% of the nation's electronic waste being diverted away from landfill, it is hoped that that the new law will result in much more EEE being recycled.

Why has the UK taken so long to introduce the e-waste legislation?

When the WEEE Directive was first agreed in February 2003, it was criticised for being far too complex and costly to implement. While a number of nations, such as Austria and the Netherlands, were able to implement the measures on time; others struggled. The UK delayed adopting the legislation a number of times.

Following the announcement of yet another postponement in July 2006, the Conservatives criticised the government for taking "the longest WEEE in history". Officials blamed the delays on "major difficulties".

However, industry figures said the set-backs were a result of the UK attempting to establish a system that would be successful once it was up and running, whereas a number of other nations decided to adopt the directive quickly and sort out any problems as they occurred.

Implementing the WEEE Directive in the UK is estimated to cost between £111m and £133m, rising to £331m-£434m by 2017, according to the Department for Trade and Industry.

BBC 3 Jul 07
The mechanics of e-waste recycling
By Mark Kinver
Science and nature reporter, BBC News

The latest addition to the portfolio of laws designed to cut the amount of rubbish we bury in the ground has finally come into force in the UK.

The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive requires at least 4kg of e-waste (eg PCs, TVs, washing machines) to be recycled per person.

Good news for the environment, but past experience shows that the transition from policy to practice is not always seamless.

Remember the fridge mountains?

The EU directive to cut the emission of ozone-depleting substances was introduced in 2002, when the UK did not have the facilities to safely remove CFCs from fridges. While the infrastructure was hurriedly put into place, the pile of fridges grew higher and higher.

WEEE is the fastest growing stream of waste in the European Union. The UK is estimated to produce 1.2 million metric tons of e-waste each year, which until now had mostly ended up in landfill sites.

Thinking big

So are we likely to see a new mountain range of PCs and TVs swamp overstretched recycling facilities?

Unlikely, says Myles Pilkington, communications manager for the Sims Group, the world's largest materials recovery firm. The directive has been up and running in most European nations for almost two years, where specialised e-waste recycling facilities have been developed.

One of Europe's largest plants is located in Eindhoven, the home town of Dutch electronics giant Philips.

With a capacity to process 100,000 tons of e-waste a year, the facility is the blueprint of Sims' "super WEEE plant", which it is about to build in Newport, South Wales.

It is an industrial-scale operation that receives WEEE from all over Europe. Huge tractors shift the materials around hangar-sized sheds, whether it is computer casing, circuit boards, servers or components.

"The advantage of mechanical dismantling over hand dismantling is the classic reason - you are able to handle larger volumes in a safer way," Mr Pilkington explained. "Arguably, you can get better purity of separated materials by hand sorting, but that is far outweighed by the cost saving you get through mechanical processing.

"We are hoping that technological advances mean that we will be able to get exactly the same results soon."

Plastic puzzle

The firm's history of material recovery stretches back a century, making its name and its money in scrap metal.

But the hard hats and steel toe-capped boots belie the hi-tech processes behind the massive machinery munching its way through thousands of tonnes of waste.

The group's Recycling Solutions division, which looks after its e-waste business, also has responsibility for the research and development strategy.

And e-waste has presented a whole new challenge - plastics. "One of the things that really hit us as a result of the WEEE Directive was the need to recover plastics," recalled Mr Pilkington.

"Plastics recycling is a new and increasingly important part of our operation," he explained. "We had never had to think about it before, and suddenly it has become the significant volume of the materials we process."

When the company audited the flow of materials through the Eindhoven plant's gates, it found many devices, such as household appliances, were made mainly out of plastic.

If the company was going to make a success out of processing e-waste, he said, it had to develop ways that could identify and separate the various plastics found in devices.

"The challenge was how we were going to recover these plastics because they were not compatible with each other. Mr Pilkington was a little coy when asked about the solution Sims had developed, fearing that he would give too much away to competitors.

He revealed: "We are actually going to have two very different technologies working alongside each other to achieve the degree of separation we want."

One of the technologies was "density separation", which involves passing granulated plastic through different liquids, causing some plastics to float and others to sink.

And the other technology? "It uses sensors to understand the material and an air-gun to blast the plastics in different directions."

Making the grade

While processing plastics is important as far as fulfilling the WEEE Directive is concerned, it is classified as "low grade" material. In other words, the resale value of the recovered material is unlikely to cover the processing costs.

"High-grade materials are predominately metal," Mr Pilkington explained. "Whether in the frame or within the electronics, there are potentially a lot of high value precious metals."

Like the plastics, the metal recovery process involves breaking the components down to the size of thumbnails, after any hazardous parts have been removed manually.

"Then there are sorting processes to get the [metals] into their individual constituents," he added. These include using powerful "true magnets" to extract ferrous metals, and eddy currents (a rapidly alternating electrical current) to attract the remaining non-ferrous metals like copper wiring.

The Eindhoven plant also has facilities to recover printer cartridges and cathode ray tubes (CRTs) from TVs and monitors. Across Europe, Sims processed 320,000 tons of WEEE in 2006. Two-thirds of this, equivalent to 12.7m PCs, was handled by "dedicated processes" like the ones at its plant in Eindhoven.

But this is only a small fraction of Europe's estimated annual e-waste of 6.4m tons, admits Mr Pilkington. "The entire electronic recycling sector within Europe is estimated to be eventually worth six billion euros (£4.1bn), so there is still a long way to go."

HAZARDOUS WASTE
1: Lead in cathode ray tube and solder
2: Arsenic in older cathode ray tubes
3: Selenium in circuit boards as power supply rectifier
4: Polybrominated flame retardants in plastic casings, cables and circuit boards
5: Antimony trioxide as flame retardant
6: Cadmium in circuit boards and semiconductors
7: Chromium in steel as corrosion protection
8: Cobalt in steel for structure and magnetivity
9: Mercury in switches and housing
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