WEEE Directive failing to achieve aims, says Axion

More than 16 months after its launch in the UK, the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive is still failing to deliver its original aims, according to Axion Recycling.

The WEEE Directive was developed to deliver high-quality recycling of waste electrical and electronic equipment to produce a useful stream of materials for remanufacture back into new electrical and electronic goods.

However, Axion Recycling has argued that there is now an increase in the level of waste being exported to third world countries, which can be to the detriment of human and environmental health.

Keith Freegard, sales director of Axion Recycling, told a Brussels conference that the export of untreated WEEE waste, or whole items labelled for 'reuse', to countries with a lack of control on disposal of unwanted material fractions, causes more environmental damage than EU landfill of whole WEEE items.

Giving his views on the Directive's track record to date, Freegard suggested that Europe should process the waste streams created by WEEE primary treatment inside Europe, under legislative controls that ensure that the environment and human health is protected.

The producers of electrical equipment have been made responsible for their end-of-life waste products under this Directive and, Freegard believes that this should include ensuring that the by-products of primary WEEE treatment are handled in processes that uphold the principles of duty of care for waste.

He said: 'It's clear that the WEEE Directive is failing to deliver what it originally set out to do; that is the best treatment, recovery and recycling techniques should be applied to maximise material re-use and to minimise risks to human health and the environment.

'In reality what has happened is finding the cheapest way to smash up an electrical item.

'While the metal recovery from this route is a valuable benefit, there is a destruction of the potential value in circuit boards and plastic components, which end up in a highly co-mingled, very dirty WEEE shredder residue.

The Directive allows the by-products of WEEE primary treatment to be exported for further recycling to countries where the processing methods are claimed to operate under 'broadly equivalent standards'.

Evidence of the mass of material that actually ends up being recycled or the environmental disposal methods used for unwanted waste fractions is non-existent, in Freegard's view.

Calling for much stronger controls on the export of WEEE and how it is subsequently reused or recycled, Freegard added: 'We may have got some things right, but my view is we got an awful lot wrong.

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