 Home Strengths Best Practices |
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BEST PRACTICES |
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Legislators
 Adhere to "Better Regulation" and "minimizing the administrative burdens" principles: For example, in the EU, 27 different transpositions and interpretations of the WEEE Directive have led to high costs, disorder, delays and lost focus on the original environmental intent. Increasing harmonization can improve compliance and avoid free-riding. Enforcement to essential to avoid free-riding, illegal exports, low quality of treatment and to create positive incentives for collection.
Producers
Producers have three types of responsibilities :
Financially: Whatever financing mechanism is applied for the collection categories with net costs, the mechanism itself should not promote doing less.
Organisationally: Producers are the only stakeholders with global organising capabilities. More development of trans-national and even global approaches should be welcomed that improve economies of scale, recycling knowledge and better collection and treatment.
Product Design: From an eco-efficiency perspective, design should be focused on avoiding specific recycling "accidents". It is difficult to establish a design feedback loop that includes old appliances collected (sometimes 20+ years old) and new products. All design for recycling motivated product design changes should be evaluated from a life cycle perspective to ensure that end-of-life considerations are balanced with other eco-design principles.
Take Back Systems / Compliance Schemes
Develop a joint strategy and positioning toward an "Ideal WEEE Framework" based on compromise instead of debating individual issues separately. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions, for all WEEE solutions tailor-made for different sub-sectors (IT, CE, White Goods, Lighting Equipment ) have completely different environmental priorities and eco-realisation economies of scale: Educate consumers to hand in old products, make logistics efficient and aggregate treatment and auditing standard for recyclers. The introduction of market instruments that encourage positive competition for more collection should be further researched.
Municipalities
Avoiding illegal trading and "Cherry picking". Provide easily accessible, free of charge collection points for consumers. Mandatory hand-in to compliance schemes can decrease (illegal) trading of collected goods. Furthermore, educate local consumers on easily accessible waste collection points.
Retailers
Better retail involvement means more service to consumers with more easily accessible collection points and direct fulfilment of producer obligation for their own-branded products. An "all-for-all" take-back mechanism should be considered - selling a product category means take-back of any type of equipment free of charge with an obligation to forward collected waste of compliance schemes.
Recyclers
Develop "Best available" technologies and practices for the recycling sector, particularly monitoring practices for outgoing material fractions. Avoid illegal secondary trading with its associated adverse environmental effects by installing and complying with transparent substance flow monitoring and reporting.
Consumers
Buy only what is needed and buy from companies that have a take back policy, donate all working electrical items, give all obsolete and dated equipment to authorized recyclers who process your E-waste in Zero Dumping technologies and insist on requisite documentation or certification from the vendor who manages your E-waste. |
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Indiana Becomes Latest US State to Pass E-Waste Law...
