Articles.
Recycling law boosts hi-tech transfer
Every year, 1.5 million old, but working, computers are buried in landfill sites. Now, an impending EU directive could mean these discarded machines, and many others, enjoy a more useful life. The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (Weee) Directive makes electronics firms responsible for what happens to the gadgets and devices they produce once people have done with them. The Weee directive forces hi-tech firms to find greener ways of making electronic goods and obliges them to help recycle what they make once they are discarded. The Weee directive comes into force in the UK in early 2008.
Return to vendor
Jon Godfrey, director of Life Cycle Services and Weee expert, said the main burden of the directive fell on electronics firms and could add more than £65 to the price of producing computers and other electrical goods. "When you use a product somewhere you will be paying for its disposal and recycling at the end of life," he said. He added that the directive would also affect every company using computers. It demanded that companies dispose of their ageing computer stock responsibly. Few bits of a computer go to waste. Currently only 35% of computers were being disposed of ethically and responsibly, said Mr Godfrey. The target for recycling computers in the Weee directive is 70%. Between them UK firms and homes buy around 6.5 million PCs per year. Mr Godfrey said this ambitious target would put pressure on British recycling businesses. "There's not enough capacity in the UK to cope with that step change," said Mr Godfrey. "One of the big challenges in the recycling market is that there does not seem to be enough demand for the materials that recyclers are generating," he said. Often, said Mr Godfrey, recycling was not necessarily the best action to take with an old computer, particularly if a long journey had to be made to pick up or drop off the discarded machines. Because of this the directive was likely to boost the numbers of computers refurbished and re-used, said Mr Godfrey. "Re-use is a very sound environmental proposition," he said. Millions of old computers end up in landfill, Tony Roberts, head of Computer Aid International, said the directive could mean that far more computers reached developing countries in projects that help to foster technology skills. Mr Roberts said that in 2002 Computer Aid refurbished and sent overseas more than 5,000 PCs. By 2006 Mr Roberts said Computer Aid wanted to be handling up to 100,000 PCs per year, the majority of which would be freed by the Weee directive. He said that Computer Aid had deals with many firms, such as DHL and BA, to take away their old machines and use them in development projects.
Increasing value
Mr Roberts said once it got hold of old machines it cleaned them up, made sure they were working and deleted all the information on them. Data protection regulations meant that computers had to be wiped of any information that could be used to identify customers. Mr Roberts said it installed the Linux operating system and open source software on the machines to cut the cost of maintaining the software. Computer Aid is shipping computers to projects in South Africa, Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria and many of the machines are going in to schools. Mr Roberts estimated that 99% of schoolchildren in developing countries left school without touching or seeing a computer in the classroom. "The multiplier effect of putting in a very simple technology that means little to us means an enormous amount to someone who has not used the stuff," said Colum Joyce, e-business strategy manager of DHL.
How to best dispose of old PCs (taken from the BBC website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4592592.stm )
Computers should not be thrown out with general rubbish Knowing what to do with old PCs can be a real problem for small companies. While old computers should not be thrown out with the general rubbish, it can be difficult to know what exactly to do with them. Dr Martin Gibson, director of BuildDesk, a software and consultancy business that helps improve the energy efficiency of buildings, looked at how best to tackle this problem back in January 2006. At the time he was director of Envirowise, the government-financed programme designed to help companies reduce their environmental costs.
QUESTION
David Pugh, UK
My company services computers for small businesses. We are often asked to dispose of batches of old PCs, perhaps half a dozen at a time. We have been unable to find a contractor who will take such small quantities, and the local authority doesn't want to know other than to say they must not go in general waste. What are we supposed to do? We want to make sure this bad pollutant is disposed of as safely as possible but simply can't find how to do it.
ANSWER
Dr Martin Gibson
Throwing away a PC really does seem like a waste, doesn't it? The first question we would ask is: do these old PCs need to be "disposed" of at all? Re-use or recycling are always preferable options with plenty of organisations available to help you do this. The WEEE directive will see the producers of computer equipment themselves responsible for financing the collection and treatment of their products at their "end of life" to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill They will usually make sure the PCs work well, wipe all old data (very important!), replace any non-working parts, often add basic software and try to find them a new home.
A good place to start is the IT For Charities website, which provides a list of organisations that recycle PCs. Unfortunately, with so much old IT equipment available, you may find that this route is not available for computers with less than a Pentium (or equivalent) processor.
Ask Dr Gibson a question
If there are no recycling organisations near you, or you cannot find an organisation which will take your equipment, then you can also try to donate your old computers online at Donate A PC. If this fails, you may have to find a waste disposal contractor to dispose of them for you. This is likely to incur cost, though, so you may want to reconsider offering to dispose of old computers for your clients.
This question should soon be much easier to answer because a new directive, the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive, should take effect soon. The WEEE directive will see the producers of computer equipment themselves responsible for financing the collection and treatment of their products at their "end of life" to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.
Collection process
All products launched on the UK after the implementation date will be marked to identify the producer and make the collection process easier.
The exact details aren't finalised yet but, once fully in force, the WEEE directive should ensure that old IT equipment can be disposed of in a more environmentally benign way.
Please be aware that no attempts will be made to recover data from any hard drive or phone recycled by us, our business is the “safe” recycling of computers/Mobile Phone to supply to Charities or environmentally safe disposal of Computers/Mobile Phones. We have recycled over 250 Laptops and computers in the last 3 years and have currently reconditioned over 100 mobile phones that have been passed on to various Charities.