As the requirements for compliance with waste legislation become more onerous, building services specifiers need to take more account of how waste products and materials from a refurbishment project will be dealt with. Peter Hunt of Lumicom* explains
H
istorically, building services engineers only needed to focus on the new plant and systems they were specifying for a building – what happened to old plant or material being removed from the building was of little concern. Recently, though, the disposal of end-of- life equipment has become an integral part of project management – not just for legislative compliance but also to meet the sustainability criteria of end clients. A main driving force has been the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive, which imposes rigorous collection and recycling targets.
Provisional Environment Agency data for the first quarter of 2015, shows that over 127,057 tonnes of all categories of WEEE were collected for recycling. This is a good start towards meeting the annual target imposed by the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) of 506,878 tonnes of WEEE during 2015. To the end of 2015, recycling targets will be based on 4kg per head of population. From 2016, there will be a new method for setting recycling targets, based on taking a three-year average (2013 to 2015) of the amount of electrical and electronic equipment placed on the market. This will then be divided by the population and, from the resulting figure, 45% will need to be recycled. This figure will increase to 65% in 2019. With reference to lighting, from 1 January 2016 until 31 December 2018 there will be a requirement to re-use and recycle 55% of lighting products, other than gas discharge lamps and LED light sources. For the latter, at least 80% of components, materials and substances will need to be re-used and recycled. These figures are based on the average weight in tonnes of the equipment/lamps.
In parallel, there has been a significant increase in the level of detail demanded in tenders in relation to disposal of waste
products, particularly in relation to projects for large companies and public sector organisations. So, with many of these organisations now switching to energy- efficient LEDs, there are growing volumes of old luminaires being removed and these will need to be treated in accordance with the legislation.
Until recently, a requirement in such tenders would be for suppliers to prove that they belong to a recognised compliance scheme. Increasingly, they now have to prove that the waste will be disposed of responsibly.
Also, in the retail sector particularly, refurbishment projects are being turned around very quickly, often overnight, so that no selling time is lost. In most cases they do not have the space to have waste luminaires stored. Consequently, not only does there need to be a compliance scheme involved, it also has to be an efficient one that can collect within 24 hours – another aspect that specifiers will need to be aware of.
As with so many compliance processes, a key element in ensuring success is to make life as easy as possible for those involved in delivering that process. The easiest way to do this when specifying new luminaires for a refurbishment project is to ensure that the supplier(s) being considered is/are members of a recognised compliance scheme that has experience of dealing with end-of-life lighting products. In this way, disposal becomes straightforward, transparent, incurs no unanticipated costs and is fully auditable.
www.lumicom.co.uk
*Lumicom is a not for profit producer compliance scheme, created by a forerunner of the Lighting Industry Association to help producers, selling into the non-household market, meet their obligations under the WEEE Regulations.
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