Brussels outlaws skipping

By 13 August 2005, under the EU Directive 2002/96/EC on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), manufacturers and importers of IT hardware must arrange and fund the recovery, reuse and recycling of discarded kit.

For every 100 new computers Dell or HP sell, they’ll have to take back 100 – for free. They’ll have to work with other manufacturers and importers to meet government targets for the three Rs: recovery, reuse and recycling.

At treatment and recycling plants, they’ll have to identify all the components and materials in the equipment – as well as the location of the dangerous bits. And vendors will have to mark their products with a special “Not for wheelybins” logo, indicating that they’re to be collected separately from mainstream household waste.

Until 1 March 2004, manufacturers, importers and retailers of IT hardware, as well as local authorities, waste treatment facilities and charitable IT refurbishers, will all have a chance to consult with the DTI about the practicalities of “take-back”.

They can state their opinion about what the DTI calls “a decision tree approach” to help interpret whether products in grey areas should be inside or outside the scope of the EU directive. They can comment on the government’s plan for a UK national clearing house of IT waste, modelled on a scheme that operates in Germany. They can say what kind of business forum they would like to meet in to discuss how they will redesign their products to suit the three Rs, as well as to lower their products’ use of energy.

Nor are these last vague moves in the direction of eco-design the end of it. As the DTI properly notes, the EU’s Integrated Product Policy framework and its Energy Using Products Directive will shape Brussels’ policy on product innovation in future. A whole new agenda in IT is opening up – one in which innovation in everything from PCs to servers must meet EU regulatory strictures on the environment.

Manufacturers and importers of IT hardware will be required to register with a central UK waste authority by 30 June 2005. They will also have to provide that body with financial guarantees that demonstrate they can afford all the ramifications of take-back. IT suppliers will not know what has hit them.

Along with other members of the EU, the UK will encourage consumers to participate in the collection of IT waste and to facilitate reuse, treatment and recovery. There will, no doubt, be the usual finger-wagging campaign to change the behaviour of the plebs in relation to IT waste. But in all the massive UK and EU documentation that now accompanies WEEE, there is little that I can find about how IT directors should respond to it.

As ever, governments seem to see IT as a consumer issue, not a business one. But for IT directors – society’s big buyers of hardware – the prospect of vendors trading in and charging extra for waste, rather than investing in more powerful products, will not be reassuring.