Electronics OEMs face WEEE deadline, too

James Carbone -- Purchasing, 11/17/2005

While most electronics companies are working to meet the deadline for the Restriction on the use of Hazardous Substances law, there is another deadline looming for them.

The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment law will also go into effect in 2006 in many European countries. It was supposed to go into effect in European Union (EU) member states this year, but the deadline was extended in many countries. The UK and other member states have set a WEEE deadline for June 2006.

The purpose of WEEE is to reduce the amount of hazardous materials that countries have in their landfills.

The law means that electronic equipment will need to be recycled when it reaches end-of-life. The responsibility for the recycling is the "producer-polluter," which is the name of the company on the equipment. That means electronics manufacturing services (EMS) providers who often build the equipment on behalf of the OEM are off the hook concerning WEEE. However, some EMS providers, like Celestica, based in Toronto, offer OEMs green services and help OEMs recycle old equipment.

"One of the other interesting aspects of WEEE is that in order to be able to be accountable for the recycling of the equipment, the producer-polluter needs to register in the member states within Europe," says Marjory Craw-Ivanco, director of engineering lab and green services for Celestica. "To do so, you need to have a presence in member states. If you don't have a presence you won't be able to register."

However, an OEM's distributor can register on behalf of the company. The distributor will then be considered the producer-polluter and will bear the financial responsibility of disposing of the products so distributors may be reluctant to register for OEMs.

It's unclear what the cost will be to companies, but OEMs are trying to figure out ways to manage and minimize the cost of WEEE.

"There is a cost to set up this infrastructure to enable the appropriate disposal of various electronics and hazardous wastes with them," says Dan Henes, general manager of global engineering services for Celestica. "In some cases companies will absorb it. Sometimes they will put it in the unit cost of new items shipped," he says.

One way to reduce the cost of recycling is to recover usable materials from the equipment such as hard drives or monitors and resell them, says Craw-Ivanco.

If a computer system works, it may be able to be resold or it could be used for parts by repair shops.

"You can take an old printed circuit board, smelt it and recover metals like palladium, copper and nickel," she says.

One company that is not worried about WEEE is Hewlett-Packard. "Our environmental programs go back to the 1980s," says David Lear, HP's vice president of corporate, social and environmental responsibilities. "That's when we started recycling products from customers."

In 1987, the company started using design-for-environment criteria when developing new products so they could be recycled easier.

"We looked at how we consolidate plastics. How we mark our plastics so recyclers can identify them. We looked at all aspects of the product, the metals, components, packaging, and power usage," he says.