European firms struggle to meet WEEE recovery targets

“The consensus amongst virtually all experts visited was that the easy part of the directive, collection targets, was already being achieved,” said the report. “However, the material recovery targets were proving more challenging.”

Most member states are easily achieving the 4kg per person target and Sweden has actually hit 14kg per person. But simple separation and recovery of the metal fraction, no matter how advanced the technology and processing equipment being used, was unlikely to meet the 80 per cent requirement, found the report.

For recovery, all countries recognised small WEEE items as particularly troublesome. “To achieve the agreed recovery rate it was recognised that clean separation, and more importantly final recovery, of the plastic fraction was paramount,” said the report. “This was always much more difficult and, by implication, more expensive than first envisaged and was where most research was being applied.”

The re-use of plastics appears to be a headache Europe-wide for all WEEE. Mostly only reusable as plastic if it is properly separated, and with incineration frowned upon, conversion to transportation fuel seen as one possibility.

Overall, there is no particular scheme that could be repeated in the UK, said the report: “Each supply chain has to be viewed in its entirety as each link depends on the preceding and subsequent steps. For example, it is unlikely that the UK would be able to pick a best-in-class idea from the Swedish collection system and combine it with the most innovative recovery technology available in Germany.”

A significant detailed finding was that segregating material as early as possible in the supply chain almost always pays off “which will be singularly difficult for the UK”, said the report.

‘WEEE recovery: the European story. Report of a DTI global watch mission’ is available here.