International Review of Waste Management Policy - Department of ...

Historical and ‘orphan’ waste, whose producers have gone out of business, must be
dealt with within the WEEE policy system - for example, by making existing producers
responsible for such WEEE according to their respective market share. 455
Individual Individual Individual or or Collective Collective Take Take-Back Take Back Back Schemes
Although the first generation of WEEE policies have typically involved collective takeback
schemes e.g. El-Kretsen in Sweden, there is now increasing interest in individual
take-back programmes. According to a report by OECD, the increasing focus on
individual schemes has been advocated by some significant market players; for
example, Hewlett Packard has argued that any US state laws aiming to use some
form of collective take-back approach should also allow opt-out by individual
companies that can demonstrate that they have their own take-back and recycling
programmes. 455 This argument is based on the thinking that the company’s own
approaches will be more cost-effective than the collective state-government
sponsored systems, and that where companies take efforts to improve the design of
their products for recycling and re-use, or to minimize materials use, then they will
benefit directly from these efforts (rather than the benefits being spread across all
producers in a collective scheme). Similar thinking has also led to the collective
European arrangement of HP, Electrolux, Braun and Sony, to provide competition to
existing collective organisations in Europe whilst still achieving some economies of
scale.
An individual system may provide more direct incentives for ‘design for environment’
(DfE) activities such as increasing the ability to recycle components within the
products, but it may also be more difficult for the government to monitor the activities
of many individual companies, and it is also likely to be more difficult to achieve
economies of scale than in a collective system. As such, this option is more likely to
be available to major players than smaller ones (though it should be noted that the
electronics sector is, for many product categories, dominated by a relatively small
number of firms). Collective environments may also be the best way to get new
infrastructure in place for more recent WEEE schemes. Nonetheless, as advocated by
Hewlett Packard and many systems currently in place within the EU (see Table 20-1),
it may be prudent to leave the option open for individual take-back schemes to
develop.
Targets
Targets
As noted by Greenpeace (2005), 456 mandatory re-use and recycling targets are a key
element of encouraging the recycling of WEEE. In addition, the stipulation that Energy
from Waste be excluded from ‘recycling’ targets should also be considered, in order to
455 OECD (2006) EPR Policies and Product Design: Economic Theory and Selected Case Studies,
Working Group on Waste Prevention and Recycling, Environment Policy Committee.
456 Greenpeace (2005) Toxic Tech: Pulling the Plug on Dirty Electronics, Extended Producer
Responsibility.
403
International Review of Waste Policy: Annexes