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Electronic Retailers In Europe Now Required To Take Back Old Goods
Qedward writes with this excerpt about the EU approach to E-waste: "A European Union law that will require all large electronic retailers to take back old equipment came into force yesterday. The new rules are part of a shake-up of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive and will gradually be implemented across the EU over the next seven years. Waste electrical and electronic equipment, or WEEE, is one the fastest growing waste streams in the EU, but currently only one-third of electrical and electronic waste is separately collected and appropriately treated. Systematic collection and proper treatment is essential for recycling materials like gold, silver, copper and rare metals in used TVs, laptops and mobile phones."
If manufacturers have to go to the trouble of recycling their goods they might be tempted to make them more reliable rather than having 10K TVs that died 1 day after their warranty ran out sitting in their warehouse. Or alternatively perhaps we'll go back to goods that are designed to be repaired more easily instead of being junked just because 1 capacitor blew that could be replaced for pennies.
This is a really important step forward for the environment.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
They now charge a 'recycling fee' on new electronic appliances. This goes from a couple of cents for small electronics to a couple of euros for fridges.
As long as the fucking Chinese have a stranglehold on most of the rare-earth production then we're stupid not to recycle what we have.
Contrary to what the name implies, rare-earth metals actually aren't that rare. They are just found in very low concentrations, which means that refining them is energy-expensive and environmentally unfriendly. This is why most production takes place in China: they run coal-fired power plants (with lots of cheap coal to run them) and don't give a crap about the environment. We could refine rare-earth metals in the US or European Union from domestic ore supplies, but it would be much more expensive because the production would have to be compliant with worker safety and environmental protection standards. Should a true emergency situation arise, we could make ends meet.
I'm not sure you can make the argument they have a stranglehold. Some estimates are that China has 95% of the world's rare earth metals on land, so unless you expect China to give away land to other countries, it really can't be faulted for having almost all of them.
But you could always get them from the bottom of the ocean, at considerable expense.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
The difference here is that you won't be required to make a new purchase. Many UK retailers will also dispose of your old stuff free if you buy something, although they're not required to.
We just need to recycle them. Think of the markets being created here for reclaiming technologies.
Lets look just at indium, a LCD screen component also a "rare earth". I'm having serious difficulty figuring out the "ore value" of indium. If anyone can do any better please post.
First of all lets not argue decimal places when I'm just trying to get a handle on orders of magnitude.
So Indium sells for about $200/pound. The cost has been cratering as the economy has collapsed (don't give me a quote for 2007, OK) Some site claimed the cost of indium to make a monitor is about 50 cents. So each monitor contains about 1/400th a pound of indium. Or if we assume a monitor weighs 10 pounds, the monitor recycling bin at my local health food store contains "ore" around 250 ppm
Some USGS website claims that pretty good indium ore (real ore, as in dug out of the ground) contains a couple ppm of indium. And the separation and refining process is extensive, complicate, elaborate, and expensive so you can't argue monitor recycling costs are worse.
So a recycle bin full of monitors, treated as an "ore" is a better source of indium than any mine on earth by about two orders of magnitude. That's before you recycle the copper, tin solder, aluminum frames, and plastic case.
Since we don't recycle LCDs for the indium, as far as I know, some numbers above must be wrong. Can anyone find the mistake?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Yes, I believe something like this has been place in Finland for quite a while. Many big computer stores do also receive and recycle electronics without cost already.
I am a Jobs-Creator and my new venture in the Congo will surely suffer due to this Communist legislation. Think of the little black employees!
Gabriel Mzungu,
senior VP Heart of Darkness Recycling Technologies
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
How is this the same? This bill is forcing retailers to accept your old equipment for recycling. As in, you have an old laptop that works or doesn't work, you want to throw it out. Now you can take it to the retailer and deposit it there.
Environment fee is not the same thing, though both apples and oranges are fruit.
Now I might be wrong here but memory serves that in Sweden the retailers are forced to accept a return of old equipment of the same kind when you purchase a new one.
Where I live if you sell oil you must accept returned oil. No charge, no asking for ID, no debate. They are allowed to whine and complain and try to convince you to buy stuff, but they are none the less legally required to accept oil. So yes, you can carry bottles of used motor oil to a 15-minute quick lube place, or a dealership, or service station, or even walmart, and demand they take it, and they will. Supposedly they can deny if you're "obviously" a business, so 4 quarts of 5w30 is obviously OK but I donno what happens if you walk in with multiple full 5 gallon buckets. Supposedly the amount of oil dumped in the environment has dropped to darn near zero since this was enacted decades ago. I haven't seen a oil sheen on the local river since I was a kid... so I tend to believe it.
Can a /.er verify for me if this is a state or federal law?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I think your assumption that it must be "easier" to get the ore out of a monitor than a raw material is probably very false.
Indium in what form? How processed? Combined with what? Integrated into what component? It's used to form electrodes in LCD screens, but does that mean that each pixel has a coating of it three-or-four coatings deep? And only covering that pixel? How many pixels on the screen to deconstruct to get to that? How much per pixel versus much work? What if it's in a form that now requires more energy to separate it (e.g. rust contains iron and oxygen, but you don't see a market for your old rust)? What if it's next to and mixed with other chemicals that you can't filter without health hazards, or where your process has to sacrifice one for the other?
All things that wouldn't affect raw-ore refining (Who cares what happens to the other rock in the ore? Almost certainly indium will be found among heaps of junk that's easily dissolved in acid and then disposed of etc.).
It's also a bit like "uncooking" food. Yeah, my cake has eggs in it. You can try to take the eggs out after I've baked it if you like. The collatoral damage, energy, precision, processing and just sheer time involved mean that it's just not worth it.
Now if we're talking discrete components, e.g. a PCB track made of gold or copper, or a magnet in a hard drive, then you can just extract those components, burn the residue and get some value if the raw material is valuable enough. Like people stealing catalytic converters for their platinum. Who cares about what else is there, the platinum alone is easily extractable and worth the effort.
Just because it says "indium", it doesn't mean "raw indium, in the same format as it was dug out of the earth in." And, as you point out, even extracting from 1ppm is extensive, complicated, elaborate and expensive when you don't CARE about what else is in the rock and you're not paying for the rock. Just multiplying it up by even 250 doesn't mean it's any easier to extract than from the raw ore.
By the same token, extracting gold from seawater should be incredibly easy and profitable. It isn't. Because gold ore is much nicer to handle and extract. Just because it's "1ppm" doesn't even mean it's spread as dust throughout vast rock formation. It might meant just that you have to dig up a mountain to find one block of it in a lump (e.g. diamonds, gold, etc.)
There are 2 Ace Hardware stores in my town. One of them recycles CFL bulbs for free, no matter where you buy them. The other does not offer this service. Therefore I refuse to spend money at the non-recycling Ace Hardware. I take my money to the store that does the recycling. The market of 'me' is demanding recycling services of retailers.
In many cases, electronics that are supposed to be recycled really aren't. Instead, they are dumped in the Third World where they cause all kinds of environmental problems.
Even when some actual recycling is done, it is likely to make the impact on the environment worse, not better, than if it was just dumped in a landfill. See this article for some details (with photos) of how an electronics "recycling" operation in China threatens both the environment and worker safety. Of course, it's all about the Benjamins: "Sending a monitor to China costs about ten cents. Actually recycling it costs several dollars."
If the European Union wants this regulation to have a positive impact, they need to stipulate that the equipment be recycled locally under EU safety and environmental standards – not just exported to Ghana or China and down the memory hole.
it would be easier IF you could find a mountain of monitors stacked in a pile. then I'm sure it would be cheap and easy enough to take them with a truck to a separation line.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Yeah, but who would read Basic these days anyway? You should care more about the Python reading comprehension. :-)
The problem with recycling electronics is first that the process to remove the metals from the recycled oar will be different then getting the material from the ground, the cost to refine those materials is more expensive. It's no so simple to say just refine the precious metals from the pile of waste the refining process of one material might make refining the waste from another impossible so pulling out the gold and indium may not be possible. Then there are the environmental concerns too these products contain lead, arsenic, and mercury that must be handled properly along with the chemicals needed to refine the metals you have a lot of costs in managing the toxic chemicals. A material is only called oar if it can be mined and refined for a profit, it may well be that the electronics waste are considered oar for only one or two of the metals and that the waste from the 1st round of recycling has caused the material to no longer be considered oar.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Can anyone find the mistake?
LCDs are so 2008. Is there any indium in LED monitors?
With the exception of a couple of OLED smartphones, 'LED' monitors and TV sets *are* LCD. The 'LED' part is the backlight, instead of fluorescent tubes.
This is a substitute for a clever sig that fits within the maximum number of characters.
Yeah but you can go to your indium mine and extract 100 million tons of ore tomorrow. As opposed to monitors, where you need to collect each monitor and ship it to whatever processing plant on palates. Much worse economies of scale!
LCDs are so 2008. Is there any indium in LED monitors?
Indium "wets" glass so any screen with LCD pixel elements uses indium as some form of mask/plate/wiring. I'm not involved enough to know further details. Its not in the florescent tubes or LED or whatever your LCD screen uses for illumination. Even a reflective non-backlit display like an old fashioned wristwatch from the 80s would still have indium... I think.
From a marketing perspective LCDs with LEDs used to backlight seem to be marketed as "LED" whereas monitors using individual LEDs as pixels are marketed as "OLED" so a LED monitor uses indium but a OLED monitor probably does not.
Everything I've read about OLED is it really sucks, low res, short lifetime, UV fading, extreme cost. Maybe someday it'll be competitive and no one will use indum anymore.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Waste electrical and electronic equipment, or WEEE, is one the fastest growing waste streams in the EU, but currently only one-third of electrical and electronic waste is separately collected and appropriately treated.
The French had no arguments with this proposal, "Oui! We have been recycling our WEEE for some time now, and selling it to the Americans as 'eau de toilette.' We find this is a very profitable arrangement that also supports our sense of national pride. Now go away or I shall spray it on you a second time!"
He obviously didn't think what you said was clear enough and he chose to add to it. Your bulldog attitude and your lack of detail (also a communication problem) are why his post got +5 and yours stayed at 0. His is the one with the actual information in it, and the more correct opinion (that if we couldn't get the materials from china, we could always make them here). In short, I can understand your frustration, but it's completely misplaced. Finish your thought and you won't have that problem next time.
If someone doesn't come in the night and grab it (usually happens, there must be tons of dumpster divers in the NOLA area)...then, the garbage man conveniently hauls it away for me, and I have room to buy new stuff.
But seriously, I've almost never had an old computer or monitor (even the old, broken 21" Sun CRTs I used to have) ever last in the trash piled out front long enough for the trash guys to get. I guess you could call that a form of recycling.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Brought to you by Bill and Ben, The Flowerpot Men!
So what we need to do is throw stuff into really large landfills until one day there's enough to mine (or the tech improves so that it's cheap enough, or things get expensive enough so that we're desperate enough)?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A0p-U1LBbQ
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Now I might be wrong here but memory serves that in Sweden the retailers are forced to accept a return of old equipment of the same kind when you purchase a new one. My google-fu right now has failed me so I can't find a reference.
I might be that what was optional now will be mandatory and different countries could already have this in effect.
More googling suggests that this is how it is. /C
Mandatory in Finland also, can't recall how many years already. But it's not just that, you can also take your old electronics to local dump and recycle them for free. This also works for all other household item's that can be recycled, like old car batteries. No reason to throw them into river or park at night.
i'm not sure if you're trying to be snarky or not, but umm... yes, that's a good solution. to the extent that we can disaggregate the landfills into different piles, the better. bonus points if the landfills are in africa.
Yup. Most rare earth minerals came from the Mountain Pass mine in southern California, until the Chinese priced them almost out of the market in the 1990s.
Yup. Most rare earth minerals came from the Mountain Pass mine in southern California, until the Chinese priced them almost out of the market in the 1990s.
Then the Chinese raised their prices, and the Mountain Pass Mine reopened and is due to reach full production latter this year.
So it is economically worthwhile for the west to recycle these thngs for these expensive atoms. Fair enough.
Why hasn't some greedy capitalist taken advantage of this if it is truly profitable? Why does there need to be a law?
No disasterbatory haterages of capitalism, please. Real observations only. Why?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
and don't give a crap about the environment.
On a per-capita basis, China produces about one quarter the pollution that the USA produces.
I wonder if they will charge for the waste disposal fee like they do with tires here in the USA. I buy a new tire and they bill me a dollar to dispose of it or the dollar they charge me to get rid of the oil when I do an oil change. OR will it be more like Best Buy where you bring in your stuff and they will tell you how much they will give you for it since you have to buy a new item, or will take it off your hands for free. Although they don't take back certain things.
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
Many many many years ago there was a very funny "Shoe" cartoon strip (possibly the only one...) where the old bird takes his old car in for an oil change, and asks the mechanic bird what he does with the old oil.
Acting upon it, he says, "Well, I just take it out around back..." and is confronted with a U.S. Coast Guard ship pointing a large gun at him, continuing, "and drink it."
AC
While true, that is because of level of life of average citizen as well as significant amount of people living in extreme poverty in China.
Pollution per production would be a far more fair assessment here, and in that regard China is unfortunately off-scale.
Unfortunately, it may be too little and too late. If someone were to force Apple globally to accept and recycle their old equipment, perhaps they wouldn't have released so many intentionally underdeveloped models to sell a new one a year later on. Same goes for a lot of manufacturers. Prices will definitely go up, but quality will go up as well, as no one would want to get their "junk" back.
oar != ore
Pollution per production would be a far more fair assessment here, and in that regard China is unfortunately off-scale.
Not when you consider all the sources of pollution. A Chinese factory may emit more smoke than an American factory, but the American workers commute to the factory in 4 ton SUVs, while the Chinese workers arrive on bicycles.
Yes, it's clear from JDG1980's post that he understands this distinction. Maybe you are the one who is lacking in basic reading comprehension?
He had no way of knowing that. It seems entirely reasonable to believe someone might have written your post word-for-word without knowing that we could ramp up rare-earth production in the US/EU if we so desired. In fact, I was not aware of this myself, so his post was valuable to me. The knowledge that we could ramp up production certainly weakens your argument about being "beholden to and dependent on a foreign nation", so I can see why he might have thought you didn't know this either.
That's a complete non sequitur, as JDG1980's reading comprehension is fine. Fellow slashdotters read your posts, not your mind. Consider focusing on your own communication skills, as well as your anger management...
Some estimates are that China has 95% of the world's rare earth metals on land,
I love factoids like this. Logically, it is almost certainly true, since "some estimates" can mean almost anything, while the underlying implication is complete nonsense (China has no where near 95% of economically viable rare earth ores).
In a similar vein, the richest source of platinum is now the surface of major roads in the western world, the ppm count is higher than high grade ore.
Only $200/pound? Really? I was looking a few months ago and the price was still up around $800/kilo. If you can get a bead on that price and put it on the market you'd be doing pretty well. The ore value is much more difficult, because it depends on "what" it's coming from, and how much you need to work to get it a non-ore state. Just like you said. It's actually cheaper to get it during mining/refining production than it is to get it from recycling from everything I've learned the last few years. Getting it from recycling is just too bloody expensive, and would probably drive the price up around $2-4k/kilo.
To be honest, Indium isn't considered a rare earth in the metal markets, it's considered a minor metal with low demand(you don't need much of it, and when you do use it a little bit goes a long way), though I am a metal market newbie(only been playing it off and on for the last two years, I make my bread and butter in currencies). It's plentiful, and large amounts of are available in storage and on demand. But really, where there's iron or zinc mining, you can get indium. And two of the worlds largest sources of it are in Canada.
Om, nomnomnom...
It is because councils, who (in the UK) are/were responsible for dealing with waste, don't want to be bothered. Now the retailers will have it on their hands.
Such goods are already treated separately. Ever tried to get a TV or washing machine into a wheelie bin with the rest of the rubbish?
Its an exaggeration, of course, but not an entirely outrageous one. At the height of the SUV craze, the diesel Ford Excursion weighed 7,725 lbs, while the V10 gasoline model was a nimble 7,230 lbs. Add another 308 lbs for 44 gallons of diesel, or 264 lbs for gasoline. Granted, it was never a common daily driver, but it wasn't unheard of either.
Our county landfill has a covered drainage sink connected to a large oil tank; you just bring in your used oil and dump it yourself. I think they're supposed to at least check your car has plates from the same county, but I can't recall anyone even looking at them. Plus, I think most dealerships / car repair places will accept it too, but I prefer the landfill (one mile out of town) rather than interrupting folk during their work, which has to get old rather quickly. And this is all in the heart of a virulently Red state, too! I guess even troglodytes can learn new tricks.
I would be shocked if future generations are not reprocessing our profligate waste as a concentrated source of natural resources within just a couple generations from now. In the meanwhile, the least we can do is keep it IN the landfill instead of seeping into the groundwater or outgassing into the air. But sorting the garbage on its way out is almost certainly more efficient.
Retailers in the UK have, I think, had to collect WEEE goods under law for a while now. I guess the EU ruling is making it mandatory across the continent. Anyway, I do know that retailers in the UK are paid by the weight of their electronic goods recycled, and not by their value in terms of rare earth metals and so on. This means that they are all too happy to collect your old washing machine when they deliver your new one or take your old desktop when you buy a new laptop. The heavier the better. Not sure if the fact that they pay by weight will bite them in the behind at some point.
In Canada, every half decent city has one or two places that recycles electronics, and if you want a cheap computer, then you can go there and buy one for about $50. The city dumps also accept fridges, batteries, tyres, computers, paint, chemicals and whatever for recycling/safe disposal. Best Buy, Staples and others will also take old electronics and toss it in a corner, then call the recycler when there is a truck load.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
even when you compare all source that are off the scale. There horrid coal emissions more then make up for there bicycles.
If their polluter where held to the same pollution goals as the US, then you would have a point.
But they don't and neither do you.
China produces 500Million more tonnes of CO2 per year then the US.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yeah but you can go to your indium mine and extract 100 million tons of ore tomorrow. As opposed to monitors, where you need to collect each monitor and ship it to whatever processing plant on palates. Much worse economies of scale!
At the household recycling sites in the UK, the monitors and TVs are simply stacked into a standard container. When the container is full, it's taken away in a lorry/train/barge (for the latter, I like the irony of "Smuggler's Way" in south London being the recycling site).
Remember the alternative is still to collect the monitors, still to transport them, but then to deal with the problems of heavy metals leeching into the groundwater.
The difference here is that you won't be required to make a new purchase. Many UK retailers will also dispose of your old stuff free if you buy something, although they're not required to.
They are required to either accept the old stuff when you buy something, or pay a general fee for stuff to be recycled (and you take it to the recycling site, or the council collects it).
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEEE#Member_state_implementation
Example of commodities of scale. Shipping container = 20 tons. Mining operation capacity = 100 million tons. I one day you could mine as much ore as would be 5 million shipping containers. To understand that number, a reasonably busy sea port will handle 1 million containers in a year.
My bets are on "promession". Freeze a sealed tub full of old electronics using liquid nitrogen. Shake and pound the tub until the only parts remaining are dust, then seperate these using magnets (to attract metals) or a centrifuge (seperating metals from light plastic).
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Its not in the florescent tubes or LED or whatever your LCD screen uses for illumination.
Actually, it is. Indium is used in the production of low-power led devices, and has been for decades (long before modern led-based screens). You can find a lot of information on Wikipedia, but also check http://www.lrc.rpi.edu/programs/futures/LF-LEDs/index.asp for an overview (they specifically mention white leds)
Retailers in the UK have, I think, had to collect WEEE goods under law for a while now
Retailers have to collect items they have sold, not items sold by others. From what I've depicted from the titlle (no I haven't read the article)m now retailers are obligated to collect an item, regardless of the origin.
I do know that retailers in the UK are paid by the weight of their electronic goods recycled, and not by their value in terms of rare earth metals and so on
I think you are mistaken. Retailers/manufacturers/importers pay by the weight and reciclability of what they sell. Additionally, you must pay an "importer fee" (it was 500 GBP, but may have changed) to then be able to pay per item sold. REEE regulation in EU is an absolute mess, because - long story short - there is no global market in electronics. As a retailer, you must be registered in every country you sell to, and - while the base law is the same - every country implements their own version, with their own fees, taxes and bureocracies. Small distributors are f**cked if they try to stay legal, and everyone else but the big importers just ignores it.
Ok, I was basing this on what a manager at a large electronics retailer I worked in told me. Certainly while I worked there, the company was absolutely happy to accept any WEEE goods from anyone, including those who hadn't bought anything from the shop. We had people coming in and giving us WEEE goods and then leaving without looking at anything. It seems to me that such a policy would only be in the company's interest if they were being paid by weight to do it.
Maybe companies are fined based on the weight of products sold minus WEEE collected? That could be construed as paying by weight as well as earning by weight, so perhaps we're both right. I'm happy to admit my ignorance on the matter though - my knowledge is just based on what a manager once told me.
Certainly while I worked there, the company was absolutely happy to accept any WEEE goods from anyone, including those who hadn't bought anything from the shop. We had people coming in and giving us WEEE goods and then leaving without looking at anything. It seems to me that such a policy would only be in the company's interest if they were being paid by weight to do it.
Yeah, here in Portugal that is common practice too, but not in all stores, and not all items. We also have large recycle bins at the entrance of large shopping areas for small appliances, batteries and lamps. (And used kitchen oil too, but that's not relevant)
I was quite familiarized with WEEE regulations in my previous job, and the specifics of some of the EU countries (UK, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Italy and Czech Republic) - specially because I had to educate our (not-so-big) suppliers - and even some of our competitors - regarding the costs and obligations of warranty, WEEE/REEE taxes and the assorted requirements to be met when importing from Asian countries.
Not only are they forced to take old electronics back for free, they also report you to the police if you try to remove anything from their forced junkpile.
There is really big money in this received hardware, both in it's recycle and on getting it out of circulation so you buy the new products.
If you head off a guy who is about to throw away some old hardware however, they get really unsure about how to treat you. They want to claim you are stealing, but at the same time they are unsure about from whom...
(Yes I like to take a peek and see what is in the bins, I once "found" 20 boxes of fiber patch cable giving me a nice kick for my home fiber project.)
Which frankly, is as it should be. If the Chinese can mine and produce rare earth metals at prices that can put all the competition out of business, that's good for them. But that doesn't mean they should. The world is hungry enough for these metals that they can sell at the same price as Mountain Pass without running out of customers... and at those prices their mines will be incredibly profitable.
oh they would.. they would just refurb it and sell it again. you can still buy iphone 3gs..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
But how do you separate out the different metals?
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
" I guess you could call that a form of recycling."
It's not, but it's better!
Aside from just recycling there's a concept you see a lot of called 'reduce, reuse, recycle' - those three are in *order of preference*. Better than recycling something - i.e. sending it through an industrial process to reclaim some raw material components from it for re-fabrication later - is just to re-use the finished product as is. So, your example of TV 're-use'. Or returning beer/milk bottles, which are usually just washed/sterilized and re-used, not smashed and re-processed into some other form of glass. Better than either of these is 'reduce' - don't buy the Shiny New Thing at all unless you really need it.