WASTE MANAGEMENT & RECYCLING
MANAGING YOUR WEEE
W
EEE: Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment – anything that requires electricity to operate. This can range from battery
powered toys through to medical equipment and computer systems. Some electrical waste contains hazardous substances such as mercury and lead. To protect the environment the WEEE Regulations were introduced in 2007 to ensure more electrical waste is recycled safely instead of going to landfill. The recent BBC exposé of the mismanagement of WEEE in Ghana showing IT equipment from a wide range of high profile public and private sector sources including the Police, large corporations and even Hospitals highlights the risk of exposure companies and organisations face when passing on their end of life IT equipment. All too often, the management of this potentially hazardous waste stream is left to ‘well meaning amateurs’. Companies understandably want to do the best thing, but by passing their equipment onto ‘do good’ reuse schemes they don’t realise the risks they face. At worst, a computer could end up falling into the wrong hands, have data extracted, be abandoned and then tracked back to the source company.
Reliance on reuse may not be the best option if the equipment that is passed on has a low value: the temptation will always be to save money on recycling and try to send it to a reuse point. And when it does end up being recycled, is it really being recycled?
This report explores these issues and guides WEEE holders on what they need to do to keep themselves covered. Imagine this: you are the office manager responsible for arranging upgrading of your company’s computing system. Or ‘going digital’ means that you decide to do an upgrade on all your TV receiving equipment. What do you do with the left overs that the new equipment providers haven’t taken away? You think there is a lot of life left in these items - if only you could find a proper home for them. It could be a chance to gain some PR credit by passing the material on to one of the number of organisations out there offering to take the equipment away with the promise of
32|
SUSTAINABLE FM | APRIL 2010
RIGHT? – think again
Alan Potter, Director, Beyond Waste
giving it a good home. You are a little concerned but have been assured by your IT people that it is safe to pass it on. However, the next thing you know the Environment Agency is knocking at your door telling you that the equipment you passed on has turned up in a container bound for Africa but that the equipment had been so damaged in transit that it was no longer of use and hence has now been declared an illegal shipment and has been impounded. This might seem unlikely, but the
WHAT EXACTLY IS WEEE?
There are thirteen different types of WEEE specified in the Directive. The common types that might be found in offices and commercial premises include: • cooking & cleaning appliances (kettles, microwaves, vacuum cleaners etc)
• IT and telecoms equipment (computers, laptops, phones, monitors etc)
• cooling equipment (fridges, electric fans, air conditioning units etc)
• monitoring equipment (smoke detectors, heating regulators, thermostats)
• automated drinks and food dispensers
• low energy lightbulbs
recent commitment by the UK’s environmental regulator, the Environment Agency, to cracking down on the illegal export of WEEE has revealed some startling facts. For example an international spot check exercise found that up to 90% of the contents of containers sent for export were not working properly, and much was so poorly packaged that little if any would be usable on arrival. And as the Environment Agency says the law is clear: electrical waste must be recycled in the UK, not sent to developing countries where unsafe dismantling puts human health and the environment at risk.
IGNORANCE IS NO DEFENCE
The risks of data falling into the wrong hands may seem more real. IT equipment is put out for disposal with little awareness of the potential value of data still held on it if the right – or wrong – equipment is used. A fraud case that uses personal data extracted in this way could see the business that held the data in the dock alongside the waste manager that failed to ensure its secure destruction. This is just two of a number of nightmare scenarios that come to mind when thinking about the risks of mismanagement of WEEE. So how can you proof yourself against such a scenario?
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36