Taking Back Electronic Waste

Any take-back legislation will radically change the way equipment, considered obsolete, is handled. Already major companies are gearing up for it, but it's still not law.

Taking Back Electronic Waste Host: Any take back legislation will radically change the way equipment considered obsolete his handled. Already major companies like computer giant Hewlett-Packard are gearing up for it. Tom Davis: It has change the way we think about things radically. For a start we now have people whose job it is to worry about how are we going to manage this in the future? We are now engaged in financial modeling, what for example is the life expectancy of a printer. How quickly will a printer return to us? When it returns to us, how will we collect it? When we collect it how we will recycle it? Host: Hewlett-Packard plans a big increase in it's volume of take back materials within the next decade and take back is taking off to such an extend that the next generation of electrical goods will be designed with recycling in mind. Clare Snow: Manufactures equipment need to be thinking now about how they can design equipment so that it is more recyclable. It's not something that will happen at night. If legislation came in tomorrow we will not be ready for it. We need everyone to start thinking now about how we’re going to cope with it and not just reactive but how we’re going to develop it so that it becomes a very positive thing for the UK. Host: In Germany is being pressured to bringing in take back legislation since 1991 but it's still not law and one of the reason is lobbing from the powerful appliance manufactures they after all would have to pay for the service. But some cities in Germany have decided to act; in Nuremberg a local law banning electronic equipment from land fields and inseminators has been passed. The city has established six recycling centers where waste is separated out into categorize. The recycling of electronic material gathered here was put out to tender and one by a local firm. Markus Schlogl: In the beginning it really was a pie in your business. There was no know-how in Germany about electronic scrap recycling. So we have to build up this know-how in our own really. And therefore it was a decision of our management in the beginning to build up and own research and development department to create, to produce all this know-how. Host: The problems they faced were huge. They had an enormous variety of electronic goods each with and enormous entail variety of parts most of which weren’t labeled or identified. Dismantling a TV set highlights the dilemma. There are a hundreds of models of TV’s each containing different materials. And it's not just parts, the screen on a TV or a computer known as the Cathode Ray Tube or CRT is recyclable. There is also zinc, cambium and phosphor in the florescent lair of the screen all of which is hazardous. Until recently no one knew how too safely recycle the CRT’s but this company is now pioneered the methods. Markus Schlogl: I don’t know how it's exported I mean this is -- to our brother companies in foreign countries for example in Spain or in the United States or we have corporation partners in Germany. And our job is to train and to teach the workers in these companies. Host: The German success story is due to a high level of consumer awareness about the environment. In Britain recycling whether it is of paper, batteries, glass or IT equipment hasn’t really taken off. In the mid 1980’s to try to increase awareness in the UK government decided to focus attention on rechargeable batteries. Since 1986 everyone has written seven million rechargeable batteries have being labeled with the request not to throw them away with household rubbish. But less than one in a hundred consumers keep this call. Of the cost hat we dip in which are believed are on all new rechargeable batteries. That basically is saying to the household that were to the purchaser please don’t put them in the rubbish but they else connect with them, they been have told. Host: Setting up take back legislation is difficult but the manufacturer can as we’ve seen in Germany it decides to take the initiative. Makita power tools have been operation a battery take back scheme in the UK. IT provides recycling bins that it's distribute to outlets and as an incentive customers are offered a vulture worth just fewer than five dollars for every battery they return. The return batteries are then sending to a recycling depot in the south of France. To date, the scheme has cost around a quarter of a million dollars and the return rate just 1%. Andrew Bowden: The reason it's so low because the majority of the users are not aware of hey the environmental damage that little cabin batteries are at their land field and B that we’ve actually got a recycling scheme which is probably a bit of our powerful weathers. I think the government need to do more to make people aware. Host: Some the local authority based in the suburb of London is the only other organization in the UK which is persevered with the nickel cambium battery collection scheme. Female: Most people are in support of recycling but you have to make it easy for people. If they got to go miles and miles to recycle one rechargeable battery at the end of two years, they’re not going to do it. Host: But incredibly this collection scheme maybe technically is breaking the law. The special waste regulations established by the department of the environment have made its own offence to transport hazardous waste unless the responsible organization is registered with the environment agency. That’s reasonable enough but there are complaints that this measure which was originally designed to keep hazardous substances out of the land fields is making collection schemes over complicated and therefore expensive. This red tape has caused many schemes to fail. Andrew Bowden: Special waste regulation has really been a large disincentive to the large retailers. And as it currently stands is you really shouldn’t be collecting store or you know transporting nickel cambium batteries in huge states. But what we’re actually being doing is bending the rules like is should we say to continue collecting because we stop then we can never reach the governments targets. Host: The European Commission land of the prospect of land field sites laced with cambium is now considering facing out the manufacture of cambium batteries by the years 2008. It believes that the decade is long enough for industry to come with up with an alternative.