International development charity Computer Aid International has challenged the U.K. government to take action to prevent e-waste from being illegally exported and dumped in countries like Ghana, Nigeria and China.
Computer Aid wants the U.K. government to provide the Environment Agency with the resources to effectively police the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive.
"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 licenses from organizations in breach of the WEEE legislation," said Louise Richards, CEO of Computer Aid.
Richards' comments were in reaction to investigative reports by the U.K. press and Greenpeace, an international environmental organization, that link U.K. organizations to e-waste dumping.
The reports stated that U.K. businesses engage with local traders who pass off the waste as non-hazardous and reusable. The waste is dumped, manually scavenged for metals, then stripped down and incinerated in the open air.
The government should clamp down on fraudulent traders posing as legitimate recycling organizations who are enticing U.K. businesses to use them for disposal of electrical equipment, Richards said in a statement.
“The high volume of environmentally unsound e-waste is driven almost exclusively by the motive of profit, but the cost is borne by the environment and the children who disassemble the equipment,” she added.
Computer Aid has provided 130,000 PCs and laptops to organizations working on e-learning, e-health, e-inclusion and e-agriculture projects in Africa and South America.
Reprinted with permission from IDG News Service. Story copyright 2008 IDG News Service Inc. All rights reserved.
The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive may be touted as a cost for suppliers, but unless organisations get their asset registers in order, it will also create a significant cost for UK business.
Such policies as WEEE assume a level of asset management far beyond that achieved by the majority of UK business. Unless supplying a like for like replacement, suppliers will only remove and dispose of equipment they have delivered initially. How many UK businesses can accurately identify the location of their WEEE equipment within the organisation and confirm when it was purchased and from whom? Without such information, just which company do they expect to handle the free disposal?
Organisations need to implement sound asset disposal procedures. Linking the asset register to a document management system will ensure a scanned WEEE certificate is linked to a disposed asset, providing the required audit trail. Each asset can be recorded alongside the supplier’s name and email address, enabling swift supplier contact when disposal is due.
UK business is already complaining about excessive red tape, perhaps why the WEEE Directive introduction in July 2007 was so downplayed. But a belief that the onus of WEEE is firmly on equipment suppliers could be an expensive mistake.
Yours faithfully,
Karen Conneely
Group Commercial Manager
Real Asset Management
www.realassetmgt.co.uk
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