White goods industry forges partnership with re-use sector

Electronics producer compliance scheme REPIC has announced its intention to work with specialised re-use groups when new waste electronics regulations take effect in the UK next year.

Electronics producers, via compliance schemes, are expected to begin taking responsibility for collecting and recycling waste electronic appliances from July next year.

REPIC, which represents mainly white goods manufacturers, announced a partnership with the Furniture Reuse Network on Wednesday, a partnership it said should allow member groups to continue existing contracts with local authority bulky waste services.

Dr Philip Morton, chief executive at REPIC, told letsrecycle.com yesterday: "At the moment some of the charitable organisations provide bulky waste collections on behalf of local authorities.

Professionals
"If these contracts are well run and professional then there is no reason to disrupt them. The organisation's under the network will collect the electronics and take out the reuse, then we can take away the rest fir recycling," he added.

Mr Morton also explained that where there were areas without well-run charitable collections, REPIC would work with the organisations to develop a reuse service.

He said: "Under the FRN there are at least 20 large sites that can be used to collect the electronic waste and maybe we will pick up from designated collection facilities and deliver them to these sites for separation, or maybe the FRN will do that themselves – but we intend to maximise reuse as much as possible.

"There are economic, environmental and social benefits to reusing electronics and REPIC expects to announce partnerships with other charitable organisations as well as the FRN," he added.

Targets
In the WEEE Directive it says that reuse should be prioritised, and there are plans by the European Commission to bring in reuse targets after 2008.

Craig Anderson, development manager, said: "We this as a strong endorsement by REPIC, we have worked closely together for the last three years. This type of structured approach should maximise the amount of electrical and electronic appliances that can be reused or refurbished by our network of authorised reuse operators, while supporting REPIC's WEEE collection responsibilities."

REPIC is planning to run a group of seminars for local authorities in December and January covering the WEEE Directive. The company has spoken to LARAC and will be arranging dates for the events in the near future.

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