Recycling directive finally bites

The long-awaited, often delayed Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive finally got teeth in the UK yesterday.

Despite WEEE coming into force in January 2007, the Department of Trade and Industry said at the time it would not take full effect until 1 July 2007, at which time manufacturers of electrical kit and computer hardware would have to begin covering the costs of recovery and recycling.

WEEE is an EU legislation aimed at forcing businesses and consumers to dispose of electronic gadgets in a responsible fashion - namely through increased recycling and reuse.

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Richard Waterhouse, environmental manager at the UK IT industry trade group Intellect, told silicon.com the IT industry has done "pretty well" to comply with the WEEE Directive. Waterhouse said large organisations in particular, have done all they are required to do, which has been to register with the Environment Agency (EA) and provide the names of all their products and brands.

However, Waterhouse added smaller companies with fewer resources may struggle with the WEEE directive due to a lack of understanding or knowledge about the new legislation.

Speaking at the first of a series of nationwide seminars on WEEE regulations in January 2007, Bob Mead, WEEE implementation product manager at the EA, admitted guidelines for the new legislation are still unclear.

Despite much scare-mongering over increasing hardware recycling bills and the general cost of IT, it's not yet clear what impact the legislation will have and if it will start to have an effect on prices.

It does seem likely manufacturers will start to increase the price of goods to cover the costs of responsibly disposing of kit, while some vendors have been complying with WEEE well in advance of the deadline.

A 2005 silicon.com CIO Jury predicted WEEE will have little impact on their IT departmental budgets or planning as their existing equipment disposal procedures were already in compliance with the law.

But the WEEE's progress in Europe has not been plain sailing: the EU threatened to drag the UK and seven other countries before the European Court for its failure to implement the WEEE laws in July 2005.

The much-delayed legislation has had a series of launch dates before the government finally settled on 1 July 2007.

The directive was originally supposed to become law in the UK in August 2005 but in March the DTI announced it would be delayed until January 2006.

Then in August the DTI announced the legislation would be delayed until at least June 2006.

Frustration at tech industry foot-dragging over environmental responsibility led the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts Manufactures and Commerce to unveil a 20-foot tall robot, called the WEEE man, on London's South Bank in 2005.