Europe’s WEEE regulations might need a rethink

Both legislators and the citizens who vote for them have indicated they are in favor of seeing obsolete electronics recycled responsibly. In the European Union and elsewhere, there seems to be less agreement on how to best achieve optimal waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) recycling rates.

Even before recycling techniques are compared, the Brussels-based WEEE Forum says it finds fault with how collection rates in EU member countries are calculated.

In July of last year, the European Commission (EC) called on each EU nation to meet obsolete electronics collection and recycling targets set several years earlier. “Whilst the WEEE Forum acknowledges that much more WEEE must be separately collected for responsible management and to recover (critical) materials, we also believe that it highlights the need to thoroughly revise [the] legislation.”

Per the 2012 directive setting the target, the minimum collection rate to be achieved annually by each EU nation is 65 percent of the average weight of electrical and electronic equipment placed on the market in that country in the three preceding years. Alternatively, national governments can opt for a recycling target based on 85 percent of WEEE generated domestically.

Those collection and recycling targets have gone unmet, prompting the EC to recommend that “member states should boost their implementation efforts in order to meet the above-mentioned obligations.”

Pascal Leroy, director general of the WEEE Forum, counters, “Member states’ failure in meeting the minimum collection rates underscores the urgency of a thorough rethink of waste legislation and its implementation and the importance of a reform of the extended producer responsibility (EPR) principle.”

Leroy says “proper reuse [and] repair” methods are not adequately recognized or rewarded by the EC’s methodology.

During the last few years, the WEEE Forum says it has “consistently argued that the minimum collection rate methodology is not meaningful, and therefore not fit for purpose, for three distinct reasons: it has a perverse effect, it is ill-suited for circularity strategies, and it is distortive.”

The group continues, “The minimum collection rate has a perverse effect: the more WEEE is disposed of, the easier it is for that member state to meet the minimum collection rate. Countries where people do not return their end-of-life appliances to a collection point to have them repaired or recycled, but repair them themselves, or give them a second life by sharing them with relatives, will generate a smaller volume of WEEE and therefore show lower collection rates.”

The organization says the outcome is not reflective of the goal. “The EU seeks to promote circularity initiatives, not a pro-forma higher collection rate.”

The WEEE Forum adds, “The minimum WEEE collection rate methodology must measure all aspects of the circular economy, such as reduction of consumption, the global economy, market trends, consumers’ hoarding and circular consumer behavior, which would be constituents of a much more powerful set of circularity metrics. Legislation must identify alternative performance indicators more akin to a circular economy.”

While the United Kingdom is no longer part of the EU, a WEEE recycler there sees similar problems in that nation.

Citing national WEEE collection and recycling statistics, Emma Armstrong, sustainable electronics ambassador at U.K.-based In2tec Ltd., comments, “Throwaway electronics have a devastating ecological impact, ruin the health of waste pickers in developing countries, and waste [metallic] elements like gold, aluminum, copper and steel—and none of this is necessary.”

She continues, “There is a solution to e-waste that combines economic and environmental viability: permitting the reuse, repair and refurbishment of electronics.

“Many electronic components are designed for upwards of 25 years of life, but on average are used for less than four years," Armstrong adds. "Embracing tech products designed to be disassembled and modular can slash the consequences of e-waste cost effectively."

In2tec says its methods include the development of ReUSE, which it calls a series of materials, processes and design principles used to manufacture printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs).” The company’s ReCYCLE process is deployed to “unzip” PCBAs “to the original bill of materials,” In2tec adds.

“Fortunately, there are significant economic benefits to repairing and reusing,” Armstrong says. “The ability to gain undamaged and uncontaminated components for second life use means they are both carbon-free and zero cost, turning electronics recycling into an opportunity for profit and changing the e-waste liability into an asset.”