The amount of electronic waste that has to be properly collected and processed is set to increase drastically across Europe, after revised rules came into force on Monday.
The idea behind the rule change is to protect the environment from harmful waste, and recover the gold, silver, copper and rare metals that are used in our laptops, mobile devices, TV sets and other gadgets.
The original Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive, now a decade old, called for a minimum 4kg of such waste to be recovered for recycling each year, for each person in the EU — that’s around one-fifth of the 10 million tons of WEEE generated each year in the union.
The revised directive drastically increases the collection target to 45 percent of all electronic equipment sold from 2016 and, from 2019, either 65 percent of all equipment sold or 85 percent of electronic waste generated.
Source: ZDNet
By David Meyer