Dumped Household Electronics
Feb
12
Many of the items you buy have electronic parts. Every year around a million tons of waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE) — including things like digital watches, fridges, televisions, computers, mobile phones, and toys — are thrown out in the UK. Around 2 million televisions are thrown out each year and almost as many computers.
Because there’s so much WEEE, and it includes so many different products, all made up of different materials, disposing of it greenly is difficult.
If all these waste electronic and electrical items end up in landfill sites or being burned in incinerators, valuable resources go up in smoke or are buried in the ground. To replace all those televisions, computers, fridges, and so on means starting again — mining new raw materials and using valuable water and energy to manufacture and transport new items for the shops. These processes also cause damage to the environment in terms of emissions of greenhouse gases.
Much of the WEEE you throw away can be recycled and all that waste prevented. There are still few places that take, or collect, household electrical equipment for reuse or recycling, but that must change. Under the WEEE Regulations, which should come in April 2007, WEEE will have to be kept separate from other general household rubbish and treated, the hazardous substances removed, and as many of the parts and materials as possible recycled rather than sent to landfill sites.
You won’t be banned from dumping WEEE in your bin but there will be a network of collection points for WEEE and you will find it easier to recycle your old equipment. Manufacturers and importers of goods will be responsible for their disposal and the collection points will include facilities in shops where you can take old items back and better local authority civic amenity sites.
In the meantime not-for-profit organisations refurbish white goods and computers and pass them on to schools and charities at a reduced cost. If you have a big item to get rid of, like a fridge, your local authority will have to arrange to collect it — for a fee — or you can take it to your local civic amenity site for disposal free of charge. Alternatively, ask the firm delivering your new one if they will take the old one away.
Mounting up — the mobile phone mountain
There are millions of mobile phones in use in the UK and about 20 million in drawers unused. Reduce the number of mobile phones in circulation by refusing the next time you’re offered a new model as a free upgrade by your service provider. If you’d prefer not to do that, give your old model to a friend or relative, who can use it with their own SIM card, rather than buying a new phone. The same goes for phone chargers and batteries.
Some parts of mobile phones contain toxic materials so you need to dispose of your old phones properly. Don’t put them in the rubbish to end up in a landfill site.
Most mobile phone shops take old phones back. Charities such as Oxfam (www.oxfam.org uk/what_you_can_do /recycle), Action Aid (www.Actionaidrecycling.org.uk), CRUMP – Campaign to Recycle Unwanted MobilePhones (www.childadvocacyinternational.co.uk), and Against Breast Cancer (www.aabc.org.uk) collect mobile phones. They then repair and sell them, or send them to countries in Africa where there’s a poor landline service.
Unwanted Computers
About a fifth of unwanted computers in the UK are recycled, which means four-fifths end up in landfill sites or are incinerated. As almost 2 million new computers were sold in just three months in the middle of 2006, that means an awful lot of unwanted computers – full of valuable materials and resources – are dumped.
The problem is that it’s hard to know what to do with a computer that you no longer use – so out it goes with the general household rubbish.
There’s a big chance that the computer you want rid of can be upgraded with a larger hard drive and additional memory capacity, so many of the original parts can go on being used indefinitely – so don’t dump it.
If you really don’t want to give it desk space any more, give it or sell it to someone who can use it. Some firms buy and sell computers to refurbish and sell on or for spare parts. Hewlett Packard will take back any make of computer from business customers. There are also community projects and not-for-profit organisations that collect computers for reuse projects – in schools, charities, and less-well-off households, or in developing countries (take a look at Computer Aid International’s Web site at www.computeraid.org). Waste Watch has a list of companies and projects listed by geographical area around the UK that want your old computer. You can find all the details on the Web site www.wasteonline.org.uk.
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