Delivering a revolutionary approach to deal effectively with growing volumes of UK large-sale electrical and electronic waste
Bob Clarke, CEO, WEEE Systems
Many of you will have watched aghast recently as BBC’s Panorama http://bbc.in/jJQLQ8 highlighted the ultimate fate of much of the millions of tonnes of e-waste produced annually in the UK.
What shocked me was not the fact that piles of once cutting-edge ICT equipment - clearly marked as being formerly owned by some of the UK’s biggest brands - lay leaching toxic chemicals into the African water table whilst children played around it oblivious, but the sight of the owner of a major investment in UK-based recycling plant complaining that it was only being used to less than fifty per cent capacity.
There is a clear challenge. The programme is indicative of public concern about unacceptable e-waste disposal practice. It’s also the latest wake-up call for leading organisations to stop hand-wringing and do the right thing – tightening e-waste practices, demonstrating consistent corporate social responsibility and meeting and exceeding the tougher compliance targets inherent in forthcoming 2016 WEEE Directive legislation.
But there is also a huge opportunity. Against the backdrop of a fragmented e-waste processing industry, the challenge is to make it so much easier for such organisations to take advantage of ‘de-manufacture’, as a sustainable and reliable source of materials and revenues and use business and professional E&E infrastructure and equipment transformation as a brand building, business creation and even an investment opportunity, maximising the existing re-cycling capacity in the UK.
The need to do this is urgent as it’s clear there is already a huge backlog of complex equipment taking up valuable space in manufacturing, government, healthcare and utilities because there are too few simultaneously safe, trusted, secure, legal, scalable and viable routes to its transformation. Sadly, for such organisations, risk reduction involves doing nothing more than spending vast sums on storing the equipment – a situation benefits no-one but landlords.
In the foreseeable future the volume of waste requiring transformation can only increase as equipment lifecycles shorten and economic trends such as the move of computing to the Cloud and the installation of eco-friendly building control and heating and ventilating systems will generate vast volumes of surplus equipment.
Compounding this is proposed EU WEEE legislation aimed at accelerating the recycling of large-scale E&E infrastructure and equipment. From 2014, perhaps as much as 65 per cent of new business-to-business E&E equipment put into the market will need to be recycled two years later.
So, fresh thinking is needed. And, as Richard Branson proved when he moved into the airline business or when Tesco Bank delivered a wake-up call to retail financial services, it often takes those from beyond an industry to take the imaginative leaps and to drive the innovation that enables fundamental change. It is time to look at an approach based on the entrepreneurialism that exists beyond e-waste and the recycling industry. Most of all, what is required is an unblinking and single minded customer centric approach, which in turn means a step change in the approach to people, process and procedures.
The key thing is to be able to deliver an integrated, seamless, and easily accessible approach that delivers a ‘Reuse, Repurpose and Recreate’ solution as part of a nationwide materials transformation ecosystem – and then goes one step further by working to influence OEMs to Reduce original raw materials use in new E&E manufacturing.
In practice, this means:
Reduce - providing OEMs with advice and insights about how raw materials recreated from smart e-waste management can be deployed to shrink the volumes of new raw materials used in E&E equipment and its manufacturing processes - saving natural resources and reducing energy consumption
Reuse – managing the repair and refurbishment of end-of-life E&E equipment for return to the primary or a secondary user, cannibalising that which is beyond repair for components or combining these to create refurbished equipment for tertiary applications
Repurpose - working with partners to create new applications for clients’ end-of-life E&E equipment to maximise these material assets and extend their life beyond the purpose for which they were originally intendedRecreate - managing the complete and systematic de-manufacture and transformation of end-of-life E&E equipment from redundant assets into recovered raw materials, using these to enable the development of entrepreneurial and sustainable products. This process must be underpinned with secure data destruction protocols where appropriate
To commit to this, leading, responsible organisations require trusted and reliable partners to deliver one-stop large-scale business and professional E&E infrastructure and equipment recycling. But the partners they choose must connect and streamline the value chain to link capacity to need and so reduce overall costs and create new revenues and business opportunities in a more efficient, greener, lower carbon, post-industrial economy.
WEEE Systems was established to meet this challenge. Successful pilots with major brands have provided insight and relationships on which to build a strategy which complements organic growth with carefully targeted acquisitions to provide the development facilities and expertise to meet our clients present and anticipated future needs.
We’re looking for likeminded organisations to challenge us and collaborate to realise the financial, legislative and CSR gains that are there for the taking. So if your organisation is engaged by the thought a transparent ‘Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose and Recreate’ materials transformation ecosystem, built around your specific requirements, please do make contact at: bclarke@weeesystems.com.
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The Prince’s Mayday Network is convened by Business in the Community
This is very interesting and thought-provoking. I had never considered that cloud computing would create great rafts of redundant equipment - rather we considered that less overall infrastructure was being put to very efficient use and reducing duplication, but of course in time kit will become obsolete. Good to know there are systems in place to recover the components.