SUCCESS MAKING

Get Creative With The W.e.e.e Directive

A year after the WEEE directive got its ‘green’ light and became law,has the dust yet settled on the legislation,  or is business’s understanding of the directive still very much up in the air?

Time was that organisations felt roughly the same way about their old PCs and servers as anyone that hasn’t had a pre-frontallobotomy feels about former Big Brother contestants– we didn’t know where they ended up afterthey’d left the building. And we didn’t care.Those were the days, eh?

Slowly and reluctantly though, the realisation dawned that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to just dump such dangerous, toxic products after all.

This thought soon took hold andbefore you could say Kyoto Summit, there were pesky global warming headlines everywhere, everyone suddenly grew a conscience, and the government had got its hands not so much on a cash cow as whole damn herd.And so, among other legislation, was born the European Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) Directive. Coming into force in July 2007, the directive – at least notionally – made IT hardware manufacturers responsible for making sure ‘end-of-life’ hardware is disposed of in an environmentally
friendly way.

Laying out guidelines on how kit should be treated and setting specific targets for recovery and recycling, it has forced producers of electrical and electronic equipment to not only collect end-of-life products, but dispose of them properly. Great, we all thought, that makes all our old kit their problem. But things weren’t, as it turned out, quite that cut and dried, and the last 12 months have seen companies without watertight hardware tracking processes finding – to their cost – that the laws apply very much to them too.

To coin an indelicate phrase, there are essentially two ‘types’ of WEEE: historic and non-historic – the pivotal deciding point between the two being Saturday the 13th August 2005. Non-historic kit – equipment bought new after that date – can be returned to its original manufacturer free of charge.

Hardware produced before then (providing it is being replaced with new equivalent kit) can also be returned free of charge, this time to the manufacturer of the new equipment. There is however, an apparently lesser known third scenario; one of which several businesses have fallen foul since WEEE came into force.

Because where a company is binning equipment that was purchased before 13th August 2005 and not replacing it with equivalent kit, the company in question is itself responsible for the proper disposal of said hardware. A similar responsibility exists for any kit whose producer cannot be traced.  Such subtleties are still passing many businesses by, says David Aitken, Managing Director of equipment recovery destruction, and disposal specialists Green World Electronics, with a number of firms currently facing prosecution as a result. Moreover, he warns, the authorities no longer regard ignorance as an acceptable defence.

“You can’t just turn around and say it’s someone else’s job; the prosecution will come against the company who last had responsibility for the hardware.” “If you claim to have given it to someone who said they had disposed of it correctly the Environment Agency will ask if you checked the relevant certification. If you didn’t (or can’t prove that you did) you can’t be said to have carried out due diligence.”

Of equal concern is that if due diligence is not being observed where WEEE is concerned, chances are that compliance with other crucial legislation, and even basic best practice, are in jeopardy too. Data protection for instance.

Where hardware hasn’t been disposed of within stipulated guidelines, there’s always a risk that it (and any residual data on it) could fall into criminal hands. And that carries with it potentially huge commercial and legal repercussions. From a criminal damage perspective alone, data on each individual consumer can be worth £10 to a criminal, according to Aitken– £1million for a drive containing 100,000 customer records in other words.

Thankfully though, keeping within the bounds of legality and good practice shouldn’t be too taxing provided businesses stick to a few basic ground rules.

First, when buying new hardware, be sure to take note of and keep its producer’s registration number so they can be contacted come disposal time. Alternatively, the supplier or retailer with whom you’re working may offer to affect the disposal on your behalf, but make sure they have the proper WEEE registrations. It’s also worth noting that many suppliers charge for such services. With existing hardware, check its recycling symbols. If the symbol is a bar underneath a crossed-out wheelie bin then it’s ‘non-historic’ (produced after 13th August 2005) so its disposal is the responsibility of the producer.

Historic equipment displays a similar symbol but without the bar. Consumables such as printer cartridges fall outside WEEE regulations but instead are usually subject to Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) rules. Outsourcing to a specialist disposal company can be a tempting option. But proceed with care, warns Aaron Day, Managing Director of WEEE disposal consultants GSIT Technologies.

“By law, any business disposing of IT hardware is responsible for making sure that the company or companies it contracts to do the job for it are properly registered waste carriers”, he cautions. “The disposer must also ensure that the hardware in question is accompanied by a waste transfer or hazardous waste consignment note and that it is removed to a suitable facility to be treated and recycled.” It is essential to obtain and retain proof of the above, says Day. “…And a duty of care note may not be enough; companies have to show, and prove that they have shown,
due diligence.” This is not always helped by companies’ existing policies and practices however, says Aitken, who believes that there is “a huge amount of ignorance” as regards what does and doesn’t constitute proper hardware disposal.

“The job (often) gets delegated to a junior and not dealt with correctly”, he explains. Day concurs. “70% of even large corporates haven’t got a clue how to dispose of hardware properly, and their ignorance of the data protection laws is worse than their ignorance of the (WEEE) Directive.

They don’t understand how to completely destroy data and they often don’t track assets properly either.” In essence there are three ways of destroying data, but perhaps the most drastic and obvious – physically crushing the drive – is also probably the least effective. Overwriting with random patterns or degaussing, where a huge electromagnetic field destroys the hard disk, are generally considered most effective.

The third option is to disintegrate the hard drive, but this needs to be done to a minimum of 13mm otherwise it may still be possible to recover the data. Other options are now coming to the fore. Charitable donation is a clever way to combine WEEE compliance with CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) efforts, for instance – via organisations such as Remploy e-cycle, a provider of specialist employment services for disabled people that recycles or remarkets old hardware and components.

“Large corporations say that this gives them the opportunity to do top-to-bottom CSR”, says e-cycle compliance manager Cefyn Grafton, i.e. If a firm chooses to dispose of its equipment via Remploy it is simultaneously helping people with disabilities, helping the environment, and donating useful equipment. It is even possible to profit from this process, with refurbishment costs varying from £10 per machine and  refurbished machines selling for between £70 and £150. Former owners typically receive around 75% of the remarketing revenue from Remploy.

Gartner and others meanwhile, advocate an asset management based approach. Karen Conneely, group commercial manager with Real Asset Management, is among them, and believes endemic poor asset management leads to WEEE issues directly impacting bottom line.

WEEE may be touted as a cost for suppliers, she says, but unless organisations get their asset registers in order, it will also create a significant cost for UK business. One thing is certain; it may be hard to view end-of-life hardware as asset, but leave its disposal to chance and it could quickly become an expensive liability.

Get creative

Hardware disposal tends to be the final phase in a long chain of events that begins with selecting and purchasing a product in the first place, of course. So it’s a good idea to consider disposal from the very start before you buy, suggests Aaron Day, Managing Director of WEEE disposal consultants GSIT Technologies. Perhaps even pick up some ideas from recycling steps being taken by potential hardware suppliers.

Toshiba, for example, is currently recycling its residual toner as a colourant. Steve Hewson is Imaging Systems Marketing Director with the company. He comments: “We don’t have a problem disposing of the plastic and the cartridge (which have a value) but (until recently) the waste toner was going into landfill.

Toner isn’t inherently dangerous, but it was not being recycled. It’s now being used for bitumen and tarmac colourant and can be used for anything where black is needed.” Such creativity is to be welcomed, says Day, but the greenest hardware disposal option of all is, of course, not to dispose of it at all.

Businesses are already under mounting financial pressure to review their refresh and purchase cycles and WEEE only adds operational pressure to this burden. It’s an important factor says Hewson, who wonders how many purchasers bother to ask themselves whether they actually need particular products before signing off the PO. He sees it as the industry’s job to follow Toshiba’s suit and “try to help companies realise they
don’t need so many machines.”

About the Author

Daniel Moore is an IT expert at Insight (http://uk.insight.com). He has worked in the Technical Services department giving both pre-sales and post-sales advice. He can now be found giving pre-sales advice on the Insight’s on-line chat facility and is often working on new projects for the web.