MILLIONS of printer cartridges currently being recycled could end up in London's landfill sites - thanks to a loophole in EU rules designed to encourage MORE recycling of electronic waste, the capital's Green Party Euro-MP Jean Lambert has warned.
The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE Directive), to be implemented in the UK by August 2004, aims to reduce the amount of electrical and electronic waste disposed of in landfills and incinerators by establishing separate collection and recycling systems for such waste.
By making manufacturers responsible for the disposal of electronic goods at the end of their useful lives, WEEE will also provide direct incentives for producers to improve the recyclability of these products.
But according to the UK Cartridge Recycling Association (UKCRA), WEEE will have the opposite effect on printer cartridges, consigning millions of empty cartridges to landfill sites and destroying the growing inkjet cartridge recycling industry.
Keith Moss, chair of UKCRA, said the problem was that the Government plans to exclude consumable goods used by electric or electronic equipment from the directive. Printer cartridges would therefore be exempt, meaning manufacturers would have no responsibility to ensure they were recycled rather than dumped in landfill.
This would pave the way for manufacturers to fit inkjet cartridges with 'smart chips' designed to prevent their recycling and reuse, meaning the 30 per cent of cartridges currently being recycled would be destined for landfill too, UKCRA have warned. Worse, for its members, UKCRA predicts this would force the developing cartridge recycling industry to the wall within three years.
Green Party MEP Jean Lambert, whose London constituency houses an estimated 40 per cent of the UK's business computer systems, said WEEE was clearly intended to encourage recycling of both durable and consumable electronic goods.
"The important factor is whether the goods concerned are electrical or electronic in nature. The recycling industry's fears are based on the use of cartridges containing smart chips, an electronic component that would clearly fall under WEEE's strict recycling requirements.
"To classify printer cartridges as anything other than electronic waste would be simply ridiculous.
"If the WEEE directive has, as UKCRA is predicting, the effect of worsening the UK's recycling rate for printer cartridges, it will have failed.
"The Government must ensure this loophole is firmly closed when it implements the directive into UK law during the next Parliament.
"I have written to the European Commission and the Government to demand this happens."
Read Jean's letter to the Government
Read Jean's question to the Commission
Mrs Lambert added: "Inkjet cartridges must be dealt with in the same way as any other electrical waste -to support the UK's recycling industry, reduce waste and to protect our environment from the heavy burden of burning spent cartridges in incinerators or burying them in landfill sites."
ENDS
For more information please contact Ben Duncan on 020 7407 6280, 07973 823358 or press@greenmeps.org.uk