Lighting
It’s time to embrace change
Simon Cookof Lumicomlooks at the changes to the WEEE Directive and explains why they could ultimately be a benefit to the industry.
whether it could be recycled or not. Now we wouldn’t dream of doing that and we patiently split all of our waste into recyclables, garden waste, food waste (in some areas) and whatever is leſt goes into the general refuse bin. But that isn’t where it ends because householders have become increasingly more aware about recycling in general and many will now collect their old lamps and batteries ready to deposit them at their local recycling site. Doubtless when we were all asked to split our waste and cease to put it all into one big black bin there was a backlash from people who didn’t like change and who initially weren’t prepared to manage their own refuse. A few years later and everyone has accepted the need to recycle and as a result household recycling bins are a natural part of our daily life. The point I am making here is that change is
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a part of our daily lives and it is something which we accept and get used to. That doesn’t
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t wasn’t so very long ago that we used to throw all of our household waste into one big rubbish bin – regardless of
necessarily mean that we like change but it also doesn’t mean that change is a bad thing because in many instances it can be very beneficial. The changes to the WEEE Directive are a
perfect example of this because it is going to require a different approach by the industry, but given time it will become to norm.
What’s in store? So what types of changes should we expect
over the coming months and years? Well firstly the WEEE collection targets are going to rise and this is something which we have been aware of for some time. Currently the target is 4 kilograms of WEEE per head of the population but by the end of 2018 the target for collection of WEEE will be 45% of the average weight of EEE which is placed on the market. Two years later this target rises to 65%! Achievement of these targets will doubtless be challenging but the Environment Agency will increasingly become less tolerant of practices such as ‘scrap for cash’ and companies who do not comply with the regulations. What
we could therefore expect to see as a result of this tightening up of regulations is more WEEE collection bags and skips on building sites and contractors will be expected to split their waste into the designated categories. Another potential major change which will
affect the industry is the classification of LED's. At the moment the debate continues as to how this new waste stream is to be handled. They could fall into the revamped Category 5 for luminaires, which is the logical place for them to go but there is talk by some for listing all LEDs, regardless of whether they are styled as a lamp or if they are fully integrated into the luminaire, in Category 13 (lamps). This train of thought seems to originate from more lamp orientated schemes but is more likely based on a more commercially beneficially reason than an environmentally sound one. Some will argue that it doesn’t really matter
where a product sits in a list because the main point is whether a compliance scheme has the ability to recover the product at the end of its life and treat it accordingly. The main danger with any product remains in the way that it is
February 2014 electrical wholesaler | 17
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