Why recycle?

Our appetite for ever newer and faster technology is beginning to create environmental consequences that only a few years back went unrecognised. Shortened product life cycles have led to early obsolescence and the 20-year accumulation of hundreds of millions of tons of scrap or surplus electronics equipment. Disposing of our electronics looms among the environmental issues that society and industry must address.

Returns of merchandise purchased online alone are predicted to reach $6 billion by 2005. Overall, the profitability of retailers may be reduced by 4.3% and manufacturers by 3.8% making the handling and disposition of returned goods of strategic concern.

Europe has adopted the Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) strictly limiting the amounts going for landfill and incineration and making the producers responsible for taking it back and recycling it. Whilst legislation and consumer awareness may have prompted action, the economic benefits of using returned products instead of paying for their disposal are obvious.

Environmental regulators are starting to see the problem. Strategies have arisen to encourage the recycling of electronics equipment by making it both manageable and desirable. PC Graveyard is striving toward an attractive alternative to land filling that reuses all of the products and materials.

Did you know?

That when it comes to land filling computers, monitors or any electronics Scrap:

No direct legislation prohibition exists.

Many of these products contain high levels of leachable lead and other heavy metals.

Biodegradability is very slow.

No re-use of raw materials occurs.

Did You Also Know ?

Nearly 200 million tons of waste is land filled each year! If electronics scrap accounted for only 1% of this volume, it would result in the land filling of:

160,000 tons of leaded glass (8%).

1,150,000 tons of ferrous metals (57.5%).

472,000 tons of non-ferrous metals (23.6%).

120,000 tons of precious metals (6%).

88,000 tons of mixed plastic (4.4%).

6,000 tons of hazardous waste (.3%).

Did You Also, Also Know?

During a recent survey of the UK's top 100 companies conducted by Technical Asset Management the following information was compiled :

72% of companies questioned are in favour of future legislation to put the onus onto manufacturers for end-of-life stock and ban the landfill of obsolete computers.

86% of companies supported the environmentally sound disposal of PCs.

Only 5% of these companies routinely send scrap equipment for reprocessing.

Other research indicates that 80% of all obsolete IT equipment lies in cupboards.

 European Electroscrap Legislation Latest

The European Parliament voted on December 18th 2002 to ratify tough new directives in its continuing drive to curb the spread of Electroscrap and the hazardous chemicals contained within it. Waste electrical appliances ranging from refrigerators to laptop computers now account for around 6 million tonnes across Europe. Most goes for landfill but the hope is that up to 75% could be recycled.

A key point was the establishment of the principle that individual producers will be held responsible for financing the waste treatment of their own products. Provisions will ensure that individual manufacturers products will be identifiable as such.

Parliament also got a "product design" article to prevent producers circumventing recycling rules by incorporating "clever chips" to prevent them being recycled. For instance manufacturers have increasingly incorporated chips in their own-brand ink refill cartridges which prevent the use of cartridges produced by other manufacturers being used in their printers and prevent the cartridges from being refilled.

This has particular significance for manufacturers of ink jet cartridges including Canon, HP, Epson and Lexmark who derive considerable portions of their revenues from non-reusable cartridges. HP in particular, as the largest cartridge producer in Europe, could be affected. HP's consumables business accounted for over 50% of the printer group's revenues in their last financial year.

The expectation is that an expansion of the ink cartridge market will lead to a price drop. However the associated costs to the printer manufacturers to comply with the recycling laws and the effect of a ban on forcing consumers to buy their own brand cartridges may force the printer manufacturers to raise their prices.

These are UK statistics.