UK Tightens Tech Recycling – While Toxic Waste Leaks To Africa
In the same week that the UK updated its electronics recycling laws, a Nigerian national has been questioned by police over the illegal export of waste technology
Ending Dirty IT
A campaign has been launched to end the UK government’s own involvement in exporting “dirty IT”, and ensure that old public sector equipment is used and recycled responsibly. Launched in September at the Government ICT conference by Catalina McGregor, the UK Government’s deputy champion for green ICT, the call will be repeated this week at the Green IT Expo, also in London.
IT charity Computer Aid, which refurbishes old working machines for use in Africa, launched a campaign last year calling on the UK government to tighten up regulations around illegal dumping and give the UK environment agency more powers to more closely inspect containers of supposedly working PCs leaving the country that often contain ewaste.
Policing resource s needed
“The Environment Agency must be provided with the resources to police e-waste, prosecute anyone involved in a supply chain that results in the dumping of e-waste and remove licences from organisations in breach of the WEEE legislation. It’s imperative that the government clamps down on fraudulent traders posing as legitimate re-use and recycling organisations, who are enticing unwitting UK businesses to use them for disposal of electrical equipment,” said former Computer Aid chief executive Louise Richards speaking at the time. Computer Aid repeated the call in a BCS debate in September.
Computer maker Dell announced earlier this year that it is tightening up its policies around the export of e-waste to the developing world. The company said that it has become the first computer maker to ban the export of non-working electronics.
Computer Aid’s newly reappointed chief executive Tony Roberts has also called for IT vendors to take more responsibility for their products sold in countries which have no regulations about recovery of waste electronics. “Under the Producer Pays principle of the WEEE directive, producers of electrical equipment are responsible for funding the end of life recycling of equipment within the European Union, but no such legislation exists for the millions of electronic products sold in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Producers should be made to accept the producer pays principle on a global scale, and take responsibility for the safe recycling of products in developing countries,” he said.
