Author: Concept Stadium

Posted on by Concept Stadium

E-waste Experts Urge Public: Stop Trashing 

Electronic Products with Ordinary Garbage

The 14 billion tonnes of e-waste discarded with regular household garbage every year equals in weight 

~24,000 of the world’s heaviest passenger planes – enough to form a queue 

from London-Helsinki, NY-Miami, Cairo-Tripoli, Bangkok- Calcutta

Careless habits squander precious resources; 

Proper e-waste management reduces CO2 equivalent emissions by 93 million tonnes per year 

— comparable to 20 million cars yearly

International E-waste Day 2024: Join the E-Waste Hunt – Retrieve, Recycle, and Revive!

To mark the upcoming International E-Waste Day, Oct. 14, consumers worldwide are urged to collect dead and / or unused electronics and electrical products, give them a second life through reuse or repair, or recycle them properly.  

Above all: stop tossing them out in household waste bins.

The Global E-waste Monitor 2024 (authored by UNITAR in cooperation with ITU), reported almost a quarter of end-of-life electronic waste ends up in home trash, squandering billions of dollars’ worth of copper, gold and other precious metals, materials critical to the production of such products, along with valuable plastics, and glass.

That’s 14 million tonnes of e-waste (dead or unused products with a battery or plug) discarded with ordinary household waste. That much e-waste works out to the weight of ~24,000 of the world’s heaviest passenger aircraft – enough to form an unbroken queue of giant planes from London to Helsinki, NY to Miami, Cairo to Tripoli, or Bangkok to Calcutta.

Says Pascal Leroy, Director General of the Brussels-based Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Forum, the organisation behind International E-Waste Day: “Small electronic and electrical goods such as mobile phones, toys, remote controls, game consoles, headphones, lamps, screens and monitors, heating and cooling equipment, and chargers are everywhere.  And electronic components embedded in consumer products large and small – even clothing – are now omnipresent. According to UNITAR and ITU, the 844 million e-cigarettes thrown away in 2022 alone contained enough lithium, for example, to power 15,000 electric cars.”

Adds Magdalena Charytanowicz of the WEEE Forum in charge of International E-Waste Day: “We know what to do, and we can do better.”

Ms. Charytanowicz says the place to start is the junk drawer, a common feature of homes around the world.

Globally, there are 108 mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people. And earlier surveys have shown that European households alone store about 700 million unused or non-functioning mobile phones – an average of more than two per household.

She adds that “hoarding is an issue predominantly in wealthier countries. Elsewhere, reasons for keeping appliances are often personal data concerns or a desire to recover some of their value.”

A 2022 survey helped explain why so many EU households and businesses fail to bring WEEE in for repair or recycling.

Undertaken by WEEE Forum members – not-for-profit entities that collect e-waste from households and businesses on behalf of manufacturers and consolidated by UNITAR’s Sustainable Cycles (SCYCLE) Programme, the survey showed the average European household contains 74 e-products, such as phones, tablets, laptops, electric tools, hair dryers, toasters and other appliances (excluding lamps). The survey sample included 8,775 households across a diverse group of European Union countries – Portugal, Netherlands, Italy, Romania and Slovenia – combined with a UK survey, 

Of the 74 average total e-products, 13 were being hoarded (9 of them unused but working, 4 broken).

Top reasons for this hoarding in Europe:

  • Might use it again in the future (46%) 
  • Plan to sell / give it away (15%)
  • Has sentimental value (13%)
  • Might have value in the future (9%)
  • Don’t know how to dispose of it (7%)

Others include:

  • Didn’t have time, forgot about it, does not take up too much space (3%)
  • Planned use in secondary residence (3%)
  • Presence of sensitive data (2%)
  • There is no incentive to recycle (1%)

Complementary research reveals what motivates people to recycle e-waste:

  • Knowledge – understanding where and how to dispose of e-waste and why our actions can make a difference; 
  • Convenient collection points – making it easy for consumers to make the right gesture;
  • Compensation – some consumers are motivated by financial or other type of compensations; 
  • Social norms – following what others do
  • Care for the environment – a growing concern for many;
  • Benefits to charities – doing something good for others, such as offering unused appliances for reuse, is a great motivator 

People are often surprised by information about the positive CO2 impact of e-waste recycling or simply happy to have done the ‘right thing’. See videos at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwqZMb95b3Q 

Many Producer Responsibility Organisations (PROs) – members of the WEEE Forum – organise communication campaigns and provide collection points, now more than 183,000 in all. To date, PROs have collected, cleaned, and recycled or sent for refurbishment 41.6 million tonnes of WEEE, with 3.1 million tonnes collected in 2022. 

Great progress is being made but everyone has a role to play as the volumes of e-waste generated grow rapidly, says Ms. Charytanowicz.

Urging people to Join the E-Waste Hunt — Retrieve, Recycle and Revive — the WEEE Forum outlined the Five Ws of E-Waste recycling:

What:

Any product with a battery or plug.

Where:

WEEE Forum members’ collection points: weee-forum.org/members, or any other official e-waste collection point

Why:

According to GEM 2024 (UNITAR / ITU):

  • Global e-waste management reduces CO2 equivalent emissions by 93 billion kg annually, equivalent to the annual emissions of more than 20 million cars
  • Proper e-waste recycling avoids leakages of harmful substance such as lead or cadmium to the environment
  • In 2022, e-waste produced globally contained approximately 4 billion kg of metals classified as critical raw materials, including

·        3.9 billion kg of aluminium

·        34 million kg of cobalt

·        28 million kg of antimony

  • Recovering and reusing secondary raw materials from e-waste in 2022 avoided the need to mine 900 million tonnes of ore (the weight of 17,200 Titanics)

Who: You

When: Now

Says Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, Director, ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau: “Almost 80% of the world’s population today own a mobile phone. Among them, there are those who have several devices, in some cases, each with its own type of chargers, cables and accessories. I call on everyone to ensure the proper recycling of these devices, which is key to reducing their environmental impact and minimizing resource scarcity.”

“We need to keep monitoring the development in the years to come, as the global rise of e-waste generation is outpacing the formal collection and recycling by five times since 2010,” said Kees Baldé, Senior Scientific Specialist at UNITAR SCYCLE, and a lead researcher behind the Global e-Waste Monitor.”

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Organisations responsible for collecting electrical and electronic waste equipment need to be given authority and not just legal responsibility.

Producer Responsibility Organisations or Collective Organisations may be pompous words for the man in the street. They are a group of companies or traders that import electrical and electronic equipment to Malta and are eventually responsible for the end-of-life of the products they import and place on the market.

While most companies are in business to sell, they fork out this legislative responsibility of collecting, dismantling, treating and final recycling to a third party, which is called a PRO (Producer Responsibility Organisation) authorised by the Environment and Resources Authority. 

There are two PROs in Malta which together have over 700 importers and producers as members.

The PROs are obliged by law to collect 65 per cent of whatever is declared by their producers as having been placed on the market in the preceding three years.

The WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Directive in Malta was transposed into law in 2007 through LN 63 of 2007 but was not implemented until September 1, 2015.

In an article entitled ‘WEEE responsibility’, published by Times of Malta on May 23, 2009, Carmel Cacopardo, then spokesman for sustainability for the Green Party, outlined the following:

“By failing to revisit the eco contribution regime, the government is obstructing business from moving on to shoulder its producer responsibilities. Further procrastination will not make matters any easier. It is in everybody’s interest that business conforms to its WEEE responsibilities, and for that to happen the government must get out of the way.”

The cardinal words here are “the government must get out of the way”.

Between 2007 and 2015 the government continued to rake in millions from the infamous Eco Contribution regime. It was eight full years of non-compliance to EU legislation. The Eco Contribution with respect to EEE (Electrical and Electronic Equipment) was shredded to bits by 2016 and PROs could implement the EU directive.

In today’s scenario, the PROs should have the authority to collect at the end of their life these white or brown goods, technically called WEEE. Malta lacks the correct legislation in place so that PROs can actually shoulder this responsibility.

At present, WEEE is collected door-to-door from each local council at a cost to the council. Independent of the cost results, the fact is that a significant amount of the equipment collected goes to unauthorised facilities while there is a legal obligation for the waste carrier to take it to a civic amenity site.

The council outlines at which site the disposal needs to take place. It also advises the ERA (Environment and Resources Authority), through a consignment note procedure, of the date of the collection and the material.

Even with this in place, a substantial amount of the material is not found on the doorstep. Some carriers take material to their own yards and segregate goods (scavenging) that have a financially positive value.

The government just does not want to upset local councils or regions in any way– Joe Attard

To explain, a fridge has a financially negative value as it has ingrained gases and, so, every fridge collected ends up at Wasteserv or at either one of the authorised PROs.

As a PRO, in the first six months of 2024 we collected 67 per cent of fridges placed on the market. WEEE Malta on its own has over 2,000 tons of air conditioners placed on the market by its producer members. The collection total amounts to under 100 tons between those disposed at Wasteserv and those collected by the PRO. 

Most end-of-life air conditioners are traded in a rampant illegal market. Just a few days ago, the police took to court an individual who was caught selling three compressors from air conditioners.

It is easy for a government to make a PRO shoulder responsibility through legislation, without giving it authority. We, as a PRO, have our legal limits. The government must get out of the way if it wants to see results.

PROs do not exceed 30 per cent collection rates when the legislation states 65 per cent is required for compliance. It is already a tremendous target if we had the authority but, without this, it is impossible.

And in this scenario the government had the audacity to issue ‘Orders of Conformity’ for the years 2016 and 2017 to both PROs when operations had just started in September 2015 and targets were not reached in subsequent years.

We can easily be sitting ducks in such a scenario. It might suit us. But we are here for change, change for the better, change to set up better systems for our communities at large. Change to ascertain that local councils do not pay a cent for collection of end-of-life WEEE. 

The government needs to sit down with PROs and discuss the terms of getting out of the way. We never shy away from our responsibilities.

As it stands, Malta will continue to be at the bottom of the table when it comes to

WEEE collection results.  PROs in Malta are members of the WEEE Forum, an umbrella organisation of 52 PROs from over 40 countries in Europe and beyond.

We have, for endless months, discussed the national collection of WEEE from all local councils by the PROs. While the government agrees that this is the right direction, it wants the PROs to discuss either with regional councils or with individual local councils – the usual voluntary approach that ends nowhere.

That is surely not the way. The government just does not want to upset local councils or regions in any way and continues to sit pretty on the periphery.

It is time for the government to let go completely. Otherwise, whatever it says about the subject is just paying lip service to the public.

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The EU’s WEEE legislation, based on the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) principle, has enabled the creation of the world’s most extensive, comprehensive and innovative ecosystem of ‘actors’, practices, services and technologies. That ecosystem enables impactful awareness campaigns, provides for a dense network of accessible collection points as well as recycling infrastructure, improves market intelligence (WEEE flows) and fosters responsible management of the treatment, depollution and recycling of raw materials in WEEE. 55% of WEEE that arises in Europe every year is reported as properly collected and recycled; the global average is 17.4%. In that respect, the Directive is a major success story.

The WEEE Forum has conducted a Strengths & Weaknesses analysis.

Next week, on 19 October, The WEEE Forum will participate in a workshop organised by the European Commission to evaluate WEEE legislation.

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On 25 July 2024, the European Commission called on all Member States to meet waste collection and recycling targets; its letters of formal notice to the Member States underline their legal obligation to properly and fully implement EU environmental law. Whilst the WEEE Forum 1 acknowledges that much more waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) must be separately collected for responsible management and to recover (critical) materials2, we also believe that it highlights the need to thoroughly revise waste legislation.

Background

Under Directive 2012/19/EU on WEEE, the minimum collection rate to be achieved annually by the Member States is set at 65% of the average weight of electrical and electronic equipment placed on the market in the three preceding years in the Member State concerned, or alternatively 85% of WEEE generated on the territory of that Member State. The majority of Member States failed to collect sufficient WEEE separately and therefore missed the EU collection target. The Commission says that “Member States should boost their implementation efforts in order to meet the abovementioned obligations”.

“Whilst it is undeniably true that more WEEE must be separately collected, in view of proper re-use, repair or recycling, and that waste legislation must be adequately implemented and enforced, Member States’ failure in meeting the minimum collection rates underscores the urgency of a thorough rethink of waste legislation and its implementation and the importance of a reform of the Extended Producer Responsibility principle along #allactors principles”.

Says Pascal Leroy, Director General of the WEEE Forum.

Fit for purpose

Over the past twenty years, PROs have invested millions in measures, chief among them were awareness campaigns and collection infrastructure, driving up not only collection volumes but also collected kilogram per inhabitant3. Yet despite all these investments, after more than twenty years of WEEE legislation4, Bulgaria and Slovakia5 are reportedly the only Member States that meet the minimum collection rate of 65% as defined by Directive 2012/19/EU on WEEE – see the Annex of total collection rate in the EU in 2021. The average collection rate in the EU barely exceeds 45%.

During the last few years, the WEEE Forum has consistently argued6 that the minimum collection rate methodology is not meaningful, and therefore not fit for purpose, for three distinct reasons7: it has a perverse effect, it is ill-suited for circularity strategies, and it is distortive.

Perverse

The minimum collection rate has a perverse effect: the more WEEE is disposed of, the easier it is for that Member State to meet the minimum collection rate. Countries where people do not return their end-of-life appliances to a collection point to have them repaired or recycled, but repair them themselves, or give them a second life by sharing them with relatives, will generate a smaller volume of WEEE and therefore show lower collection rates. The EU seeks to promote circularity initiatives, not a pro-forma higher collection rate.

Ill-suited for circularity

In an age where we strive to make our economy more circular, the current minimum collection rate fails to measure progress towards circularity in terms of products being reused or products’ lives being extended. The current methodology does not measure reduction of consumption, consumers’ hoarding, and circular consumer behaviour, which would be constituents of a much more powerful set of circularity metrics.

Distortive

The placed-on-market method looks at the preceding three years and does not take account of the full lifecycle of electrical and electronic equipment. Some products, notably photovoltaics and air conditioning equipment8, washing machines and refrigerators, have a lifetime of, respectively, minimum 20-25 and 10-15 years. Therefore the 65% minimum rate based on the preceding three years is meaningless.

In the Member States where photovoltaics and other household appliances are clustered in the same product category, that category fails to reach the minimum collection rate due to the long lifespan of photovoltaics, which in turn induces the competent authorities9 to issue penalties and requiring PROs to collect higher volumes of non-photovoltaic products in order to reach the targeted volumes for photovoltaic panels. Such penalties distort the market and the principle of Extended Producer Responsibility and are therefore unacceptable.

A draft final study supporting the evaluation of Directive 2012/19/EU, authored by a consortium of Ramboll, Umweltbundesamt and Öko-Institut in 2023, came to a similar conclusion: “Current calculation methodology usually applied are incoherent in so far as the long lifespan of some products are not taken into account”10 11.

Call for action

For all the above reasons, the WEEE Forum suggests the following:

A. Revise the Waste Framework and WEEE legislation

Pursuant to the most recent amendment12 to Directive 2012/19/EU, the impact assessment in view of a revision of the Directive must evaluate, inter alia,

  • elements related to the waste hierarchy,
  • the obligation not to burden consumers with disproportionate costs,
  • provisions ensuring full implementation and enforcement of this Directive, in particular with regard to adequate collection targets,
  • measures aimed at preventing illegal trade of WEEE,
  • a new ‘photovoltaic panels’

B. Design and develop circularity metrics

The minimum WEEE collection rate methodology must measure all aspects of the circular economy, such as reduction of consumption, the global economy, market trends, consumers’ hoarding, and circular consumer behaviour, which would be constituents of a much more powerful set of circularity metrics. Legislation must identify alternative performance indicators more akin to a circular economy.

C. Evaluate, improve and harmonise Eurostat system of waste statistics

The validity and robustness of the Eurostat system of waste statistics must be made subject to a thorough, critical evaluation and revision, involving consultation of stakeholders.

D. Put the #allactors principle into practice

It takes a village to solve the e-waste problem; e-waste is a societal challenge. The 2023 amendment13; to the Directive says that “provisions ensuring full implementation and enforcement of this Directive, specifically concerning adequate collection targets, as well as preventing illegal trade of WEEE” must be assessed. The Member States must enforce the legal obligations of all actors and an EU enforcement agency must be empowered to audit the Member States obligations. The #allactors principle, underlining the importance of collective, collaborative action and good governance, must lie at the heart of the revised Extended Producer Responsibility policy approach14: all entities that have access to e-waste are subject to minimum legal obligations and actively collaborate towards responsible operations.

E. Integrate EPR waste objectives in the wider framework of materials management

Beyond the Waste Framework legislation, the EU is in need of a policy framework for managing materials through the lens of circularity. We cannot achieve climate goals without becoming more circular. Reducing dependence on materials will contribute to our resilience.