WEEE Recycling

Research, Development, and Policies

Alexandre Chagnes, Gérard Cote, Christian Ekberg, Mikael Nilsson, Teodora Retegan

• Publisher: Elsevier
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780128033630
• eBook ISBN:
  9780128033647
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Environmental Management
• Index: Technology & Engineering

WEEE Recycling: Research, Development, and Policies covers policies, research, development, and challenges in recycling of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). The book introduces WEEE management and then covers the environmental, economic, and societal applications of e-waste recycling, focusing on the technical challenges to designing efficient and sustainable recycling processes—including physical separation, pyrometallurgical, and hydrometallurgical processes. The development of processes for recovering strategic and critical metals from urban mining is a priority for many countries, especially those having few available ores mining. - Describes the two metallurgical processes—hydro- and pyro-metallurgy—and their application in recycling of metals - Provides a life cycle analysis in the WEEE recycling of metals - Outlines how to determine economic parameters in the recycling of waste metals - Discusses the socio economic and environmental implication of metal recycling

Chapter 1

WEEE Management

R. Toffolet Eco-systèmes, Courbevoie, France

Abstract

Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) management consists in collecting and taking back WEEE from end users, through retailers, local authorities’ facilities, or other collection channels, and transferring it to proper treatment plants to allow compliant decontamination, dismantling, separation of homogeneous fractions, and material recovery. Following the extended producer responsibility principle, take-back systems are at the center of WEEE management in Europe. This chapter will introduce the role of these take-back systems and look into how they function through the threefold prism of status, competition, and a commitment to build up a new industry. Furthermore, it will include a critical review of current trends and policies on WEEE recycling, describe the related research agenda, and make some relevant policy recommendations.

Keywords

extended producer responsibility

take-back systems

management

organization

competition

level playing field

economic models

industrial planning

innovation

research

policy recommendations

In France, Kiki the coffee maker and Titine the drill are shown on prime-time television and voice the merits of recycling to consumers (http://www.eco-systemes.fr/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv_TnsYVOXI/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDloF7PjZdc/, 2015). Electrão does the same thing in Portugal, as does Bosco the puppet in Ireland (http://www.amb3e.pt/galeria_Videos.aspx?lang=ing&id_class=329&name=O-Electrao-no-Rock-in-Rio-2014/; http://www.amb3e.pt/, 2015; http://www.weeepledge.ie/2014/bosco-calls-on-all-the-boys-and-girls-to-recycle-for-charity/; http://www.weeeireland.ie/, 2015). In the Czech Republic there’s Asík the hedgehog and in Romania there are the Ecoterrans’ (http://www.azrodina.cz/2392-proc-zacit-s-ekologickou-vychovou-u-deti/, http://www.asekol.sk/asekol/, 2015; http://www.caravanaecotic.ro/en/about-the-ecotic-caravan/ecoterran, 2015). Today, most countries in Europe have a mascot to advocate the recycling of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE).

In the media, reports are mushrooming to place on center stage spectacular images of Chinese villages smothered by toxic fumes resulting from the treatment of electrical equipment, as well as African beaches disappearing under the remains of this type of equipment once it has been plundered of all its valuable components and materials.

Hidden behind these distressing images or entertaining commercials is the reality of a new business, that of take-back systems. By watching these simplified and caricatured examples, what do consumers gain in their understanding about the complexities of this new business, the organizations which are developed for it, and the human skills that it requires?

1. Take-back systems: a new breed of company in the economic ecosystem

From the beginning of the 1980s to the end of the 1990s, the volume of urban waste rose by more than 20% and the number of treatment units, such as landfills and incinerators, increased. It was becoming increasingly difficult to site these facilities and to see how to deal in the long term with what appeared to be an ever-growing mountain of waste. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) addressed this topic in 1994 and published the epoch-making Guidance Manual for Governments in 2001 and introduced officially for the first time ever the extended producer responsibility (EPR) principle. This principle covers two main independent characteristics: (1) the transfer to manufacturers of part or all of the operational and/or economic responsibility for managing waste resulting from the end of life of their products and (2) the promotion of the eco-design of products through incentives encouraging manufacturers to take environmental aspects into account during the product’s design phase.

1.1. The role of the producers

Two other related principles exist: one described in the waste framework directive (WFD) under the name of “polluter pays principle” and the other which defines a hierarchy in waste treatment, preferring prevention and reuse over recycling and recovery. These principles subsequently serve as the basis for implementing recycling industries for batteries and accumulators, household packaging, end-of-life vehicles, WEEE, and the like. The cleverness of the European directives establishing these industries is to position the organization of recovering the waste concerned as a general public service by involving the whole of society. It thus differs from partial trials or local projects that may flourish in some countries and which maintain as their main driver a free market rationale that focuses on the intrinsic value of waste when deciding whether to recycle. However, in this case, the market doesn’t do everything because decontamination is very costly and doesn’t lead to a commercial service or a source of profit. Therefore, Europe has rapidly positioned itself by applying the recommendations in the EPR principle such as described by the OECD, followed by some countries such as Canada. For now, other countries such as the United States and China use ad hoc and more liberal solutions.

The WEEE industry has therefore been built by following the example given by some pioneer countries and through a regulatory framework provided by a European directive. From the 1990s onward, a few European countries began to organize the collection and the recycling of WEEE (ie, Switzerland and the countries of Northern Europe). Sweden and Norway were the first, followed by Belgium, Holland, Austria, and others. Based on the experience of these first member states and the legal European codification of the EPR principle, a first founding directive was published and enforced on Feb. 13, 2003: Directive 2002/96/EC on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (Directive 2002/96/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of January 27, 2003, on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), <http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=URISERV:l21210/>, 2015). Besides the enactment of the EPR principles, its main contribution was to stipulate operational obligations: (1) the obligation for the manufacturer to mark all electrical and electronic equipment with a crossed-out bin to remind users that the equipment should be recycled; (2) the obligation for retailers of this type of equipment to practice the ’one-for-one’ approach (ie, to accept the take-back of a similar used appliance at no cost when an appliance is purchased); (3) the obligation for operators, treating the appliances collected by retailers as well as other collection channels such as municipal recycling facilities, to decontaminate these appliances by removing certain hazardous substances that they’re likely to contain and to achieve target recycling rates; and (4) the obligation for member states to organize collection in order to achieve an average collection rate of 4 kg/inhab/year by Dec. 31, 2006.

This first directive has been revised through legislation of Jul. 24, 2012, which entered into force on Aug. 13, 2012, and boosts the 2003 legislation, essentially in three ways: (1) an ambitious European goal which has been altered from 4 kg/inhab/year to a target collection rate of 65% of the equipment placed on the market or 85% of electronic WEEE arising by 2016, (2) a 5% increase in the recycling rate to be achieved also by 2016 whatever the appliance category, and (3) traceability requirements for the international transfer of used equipment intended for reuse in a third-party country with the aim of fighting against the hidden trade of undeclared waste (Directive 2012/19/UE of the European Parliament and of the Council of July 4, 2012, on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) (recast), <http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2012:197:0038:0071:EN:PDF/>, 2015).

1.2. Various degrees of transposition depending upon the member state

With the European framework now having been set, it still needs to be translated into each member state’s legislation through the transposition mechanism. The WEEE Directive leaves manufacturers with the possibility of meeting their new obligations in various ways. Indeed, they can meet these separately and thereby create what the directive calls “an individual system” or pool their resources through systems known as “collective systems.” Most European countries have seen the emergence of new companies set up by groups of producers, and which are accountable on behalf of the latter for the new regulatory WEEE Directive obligations transposed in each member state. These companies are take-back systems such as those already found in more mature schemes. There are two types. Some are known as “financial” when they only fund collection and treatment operations, the latter being handled directly by specialists in the industry—collection, transport, and recycling companies that are themselves often under the control of local authorities. Others are known as “operational” when they’re responsible for directly managing these activities, often by subcontracting them as prime contractors to the same specialists. They’re responsible for tracking operations from the collection point, where consumers can deposit their used equipment, to recycling where materials which can be recovered are separated. Sometimes, so as to ensure better traceability, these take-back systems will even take on the full ownership of these appliances when they are collected.

The role of a take-back system seems simple on paper, but this is without taking into account the very different ways in which the WEEE Directive and its revision have been transposed into the legislation of each country. For example, the United Kingdom has created a free market where each of the 44 take-back systems offers or buys “evidence notes” acting as a proof of the WEEE volumes collected and collection obligations (Sources: Benchmark WEEE systems in Europe, Dimi Defillet, Lynn Cosyn, Peter Vanderschaeghe, January 2013, <http://producenten-verantwoordelijkheid.nl/uploads/pdf/research/2013%2003%2004%20Benchmark%20European%20WEEE%20systems%20final.pdf/>, 2015). Germany has created a very special system limiting the manufacturing clusters. Each producer in Germany must collect its share of national obligations under the control of a chief take-back system which oversees that collection costs are equally shared out by randomly distributing the points throughout Germany where WEEE is collected by the different producers. In France, in 2006 four take-back systems gained approval, three of which are competitors. In Belgium only one take-back system was created to manage WEEE in the three independent regional governments.

If a closer look is taken at more operational details, the differences between the transpositions are even more blatant: In certain countries, for example, as is the case for Germany (or in Norway, which, although not part of the European Union, applies the same WEEE management principles), local authorities collect WEEE deposited by consumers in municipal recycling facilities and then hand it over free of charge to the existing take-back systems or manage it themselves. In most other countries this has been considered as a service provided by the local authorities to producers in charge of collection and is thereby subject to financial compensation negotiated with take-back systems, which represent the producers.

From one member state to another, the role played by distributors can also be extremely varied. Sometimes, close behind local authorities, they constitute the second most important channel for recovering WEEE from consumers. This service is under contract and, as was the case for local authorities, includes financial compensation. As in France, they may even be associated with the governance of a take-back system. Despite the implementation of the “one-for-one” obligation as stipulated by the directive for the benefit of their clients, the WEEE collected in several countries is not handed over to take-back systems but is directly managed by the distributors.

To maintain fair competition between the different take-back systems in a country, certain member states have instigated “clearinghouses” acting as compensation offices which calculate the obligations of each take-back system in the light of their producers’ market share and, if necessary, redistribute collection and recycling operational costs to those that are lagging behind, as each party has to bear its share of the burden.

Last, some member states go further than the simple transposition of the WEEE Directive. Indeed, they include research and innovation obligations in order to involve operators in the industrialization of new recycling technologies or in social issues to encourage employment, especially for those experiencing social difficulties.

1.3. A comprehensive operational organization

To better understand the role of take-back systems, now is the time to describe the standard organization of logistics implemented in most European countries. The first phase covers WEEE collection and is subject to partnerships or agreements with some or all of the stakeholders who are in direct contact with consumers: local authorities, retailers, associations working in the social and solidarity economy, metal merchants, and others. The more willing that both take-back systems and the producers that they represent are in achieving or even exceeding collection targets, the higher the number of collection points will be (eg, Eco-systèmes, the largest take-back system in France, has around 8000 collection points). The costs related to communication and collection events are proportional to the effort made. The challenge here is to achieve an optimum collection rate per inhabitant for each category of appliance and consists in the branching out of the collection network and its proximity to consumers (Fig. 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Operations scheme. (Eco-systèmes, http://www.eco-systemes.fr, Décembre 2015).

The second phase focuses on transportation logistics, from appliances’ collection points to the different treatment units. The streams collected at collection points are often gathered together at regrouping centers (eg, about 100 sites for Eco-systèmes). These streams are then bulked per type of appliance in order to be shipped via trucks, or, in certain cases, via entire barges by waterway, to t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: WEEE Management
• Chapter 2: Dynamic Representation of Flows and Stocks of Metals in the Economy
• Chapter 3: Physical Separation Processes in Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Recycling
• Chapter 4: Electrostatic Separation of Metals and Plastics From Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment
• Chapter 5: Pyrometallurgical Processes for the Recovery of Metals from WEEE
• Chapter 6: Hydrometallurgical Processes for the Recovery of Metals from WEEE
• Chapter 7: Life Cycle Assessment in WEEE Recycling
• Chapter 8: Concluding Remarks
• Index