Consorzio EcoR'it - waste to discover and exploit

Condividi usando servizi di condivisione popolari

Site Search

WEEE > Users

WEEE: Users

Each user of electrical and electronic equipment must contribute to the protection of the environment by behaving responsibly.

Electrical and electronic equipment are tools of great daily use since they contribute to improving individuals’ quality of life but, at the moment it is decided to discard it the question of how to act properly needs to be asked.

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) cannot be thrown into normal bins and disposed in a tip but require separated collection to recover the recyclable materials (metal, plastic, glass, etc.), to treat the polluting components correctly and to dispose of only the residual parts.

The equipment that must be collected separately is easily recognisable because the crossed out wheely bin symbol is applied to it.

Since 1st January 2008, the system for the separated collection of waste electrical and electronic equipment has been operative also in Italy, as had already happened in the rest of Europe.

But what is this new waste? It is the waste generated by the equipment, tools and devices powered by electrical energy from a network or from batteries. In other words:

Large household appliances
Small household appliances
IT and telecommunications equipment
Consumer equipment
Lighting equipment
Electrical and electronic tools (with the exception of large-scale stationary industrial tools)
Toys, leisure and sports equipment
Medical devices (with the exception of all implanted and infected products)
Monitoring and control instruments
Automatic dispensers

In 2008 around 1,000,000 tons of electrical and electronic equipment were sold in Italy, the equivalent of about 16 kg per inhabitant; the equipment life cycle is short because these things are often abandoned to be replaced by more technologically advanced products. Currently only 2 Kg per inhabitant of this type of waste is taken out of the rubbish and sent for treatment.

The WEEE Decree entrusts the responsibilities for the management of this type of waste to the producers themselves, who are called upon to finance all the collection, treatment and recovery operations.

The holder of an item of household electrical and electronic equipment, at the time of deciding to discard it, may

bring it free of charge to the public collection facility (“CdR”) of his own local council;
send it to the shop (distributor) if the equipment is being replaced through the purchase of a new product with a new one; this opportunity will only be practicable when the operational simplifications for distributors come into force.

Find the collection facilities served by the WEEE system

In the case of illegal disposal of the waste the penalties established by the municipal administration are applied.

It is important to get information from your own local council in order to understand in depth the features and opening times of the collection facility and, if necessary, to get information about the home service, active in many municipalities, for the withdrawal of large household appliances.

WEEE may contain substances that can irreversibly contaminate the environment, such as heavy metals, ozone damaging substances and halogen containing substances, and to avoid the spread of these components the correct treatment and disposal of this type of waste must be carried out.

The ever increasing production of electrical and electronic equipment and the ongoing reduction in the average life cycle of products mean that, currently, WEEE is increasing on a European level at a rate three times higher than that of the average total for waste.

Until the introduction of the European directives on WEEE and the use of hazardous substances, technological waste had never been treated or reused, with the result that it was too often disposed of in tips with serious repercussions for the safety of the environment and people’s health.

The legislation entrusts the financial responsibility for the management of WEEE to the producers of the equipment who, in order to deal with the management costs, can incorporate the amount of the costs incurred in the final sale price or they can make it visible through the distributors who will indicate it to the user separately.

The law sets out that the amount of the visible fee must be identical to the COST incurred by the producer.

The user is therefore indirectly involved financially in this management through the transfer to the sale price of a modest amount of the related costs

ecoR'it has always been committed to guaranteeing the user full respect of the measures of the law and, through its particular operating techniques, containing the WEEE management costs.

Professional user

The professional user, or rather the business or organization that decides to discard a piece of electrical and electronic equipment must carry out a preliminary evaluation aimed at: identifying the WEEE, which - even if coming from a commercial, industrial, institutional or other type of activity – may be considered as equivalent to WEEE from private households (think about the need of starting up the recovery of 2 mobile phones or a laptop computer);

If this condition is met then the following solutions can be used:

delivery to the collection facility set up by the local council to guarantee the separated collection of WEEE
delivery of the used equipment to the distributor on purchasing a new item of equipment which performs an equivalent function;

To be made operational, this latter solution requires some simplifications to the administrative measures currently; these simplifications will be set up by a draft ministerial decree which is being issued.

If, however, there is no doubt that the discarded equipment should be classified as "professional WEEE", i.e. waste coming from working activity and that can not be treated as household, it is possible to choose between two options:

at the same time as replacing the obsolete equipment with a new item of equivalent function (1 to 1), the professional user can ask the Producer of the new equipment, with the distributor’s assistance, to manage the discarding of his professional WEEE through an appropriate collection system of professional WEEE;
starting up the recovery according to the procedures for all special waste, and as a result, with duties at the expense of the waste’s producer.

These are the options planned for up to today but when the “new” system starts running it will be possible in the case of professional WEEE to ask the equipment "producer" to withdraw it when it has reached the end of its life regardless of the purchase of another item which performs the same function.