Science minister Malcom Wicks yesterday put regulations
before parliament designed to support the incoming European waste
disposal laws.
The regulations include a timetable to upgrade local waste
collection and disposal facilities and a deadline for electrical
retailers and manufacturers to sign up to the approved disposal
schemes.
But organisations’ IT departments will also have to factor the
cost of disposal into the cost of buying computing equipment from
now on, according to a Gartner analyst.
Producers of electrical goods will be required to meet the
environmental costs of dealing with waste products under new rules
published today, under the Waste Electrical and Electronic
Equipment (WEEE) directive. Gartner analyst Lars Mieritz said most
IT departments will look to IT supplier partners to dispose of
equipment at the end of its life.
“Now the IT manager must keep in the back of his mind costs he
or she might not have thought of yet,” Mieritz told Computer
Weekly.
“It could be that the cost of disposal is offset by the
[second-hand] cost of the equipment being disposed of, or is
factored into the cost of equipment up front.”
The legislation puts the onus on all companies who import,
manufacture and rebrand electrical and electronic equipment to
finance its treatment, recovery and environmentally safe
disposal.
Wicks said, “Some responsible producers are already factoring
the cost of recycling their product into the design process and
recognise that caring about what happens to the goods they sell
needn’t cost the earth.”
And Mieritz agreed most big IT companies would already have
approved disposal schemes in place.
The legislation means that by 15 March 2007 producers will need
to join an approved producer compliance scheme to ensure that they
are able to comply with the directive from 1 July 2007.
Mieritz said the legislation has made it easier for organisations
to opt in to one of the many schemes being established than to go
it alone and cover the cost of such compliance alone.
Gartner estimates as many as 512 million PCs will be disposed of
worldwide in the next five years.
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