New e-waste rules may be too much for UK business, warns Gov The Government has said that new electronic waste disposal demands from Brussels may be too difficult for businesses to meet. It has asked for industry's view ahead of summer negotiations on electronic waste. The European Commission is revising its Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive and plans a hike to the …
It always seems that if Europe come up with an environment piece of legislation, that the UK gov always moan about its cost, cry and then try to kick it into the long grass. Other European countries can seem (maybe just on the face of it) to be able to cope, so why not this country?
Maybe its something like we privatised Britain so now big firms have to make a profit for least effort.. whereas environment profit comes from breathing fresh air, not drowning in sewage and being able to see the stars at night???
Alas, if we do try to comply with these new e-waste rules, I fear the countryside pass-time of fly-tipping will get even worse. Alongside building waste, household waste and other crud dumped in the countryside, we'll end up with business e-waste.
Because of the liberal approach to protecting our environment and the fact that there's little to no real enforcement of law, the more laws passed regarding waste, the worse the problem of fly-tipping will become.
There's no respect left for our countryside - so rather than drive an extra mile to the local recycling center, lazy gits just dump stuff down country lanes. Contractors dump crud wherever they feel like to save the cost of taking it to be recycled.
Until the authorities actively monitor and regulate waste management and enforce the law, we're a hopeless case.
Actually, until we get the current shower of sh1tes our of government, we're a basket case, but that's another matter
...that most of the "wierder" ledgislation from the EU seems to originate from a UK MEP or two...
Interesting how companies such as Nokia, VW etc have been adhering to these environmental standards for already quite a long time and using this as part of their marketing strategy to good effect, while is dear old Blighty [cough][cough][hack] ... sorry, the smog here is a bit thick today, but at least we have [cough] profits ....
Profit (noun). something that the RBS doesn't have...
Paris...its the afternoon, I've just had lunch and now I'm quietly daydreaming...good enough excuse eh?
that Uk.gov cares more about "businesses" than the rest of us, I'm surprised they even bother with the spectacle of an "election" when the results bear little or no resemblance to reality.
UK gov would rather recycling went away...why? because it costs money rather than raking it in for them and their cronies as with "carbon taxes"
I suggest "rubbish" by Richard Girling, makes several very good points about how the govt ignores all manner of EU directives till the eve of when they come into force, leaving companies willing to comply with the regs unable to do anything as they dont know what they have to do as the govt wont supply any form of guidance - I.E. fridge recycling and how we ended up with a mountain of fridges in storage
This govt and the previous incarnations sicken me, someone off sick? heres a guide on how to fire them without being bothered by those pesky laws we had to pass to appease the proles, oh and here have a guide on "outsourcing" your work to those smart foreigners....disgusting attitude
as I think of British businesses as the small business, trying make money, etc, etc.
Then I realised it - the government is talking about big businesses here as well. In fact, those big businesses are probably the ones which whinged to the government in the first place!
Went to Ireland 2 or 3 years ago. WEEE was already in force there.
Admittedly I had a small hissy fit at having to pay extra for my purchase, to offset the cost of disposing it.
"It always seems that if Europe come up with an environment piece of legislation, that the UK gov always moan about its cost, cry and then try to kick it into the long grass. Other European countries can seem (maybe just on the face of it) to be able to cope, so why not this country?"
Because we are the only country in Europe that makes any practical effort to enact European legislation.
No-one complains about the practicalities of laws they have no intention of obeying in the first place.
Just look at relative safety standards in British and Spanish playgrounds, all based on the same European laws which the UK obeys and the Spanish ignore.
The trouble is that it's not the big businesses that will suffer, but as ever the small guy will gets stuffed. As a small manufacturer of specialist equipment we have been hit in recent years with ROHS, WEE, REACH & a myriad of other bits of legislation that means we now spend increasing amounts of time ensuring we comply, plus the cost of the compliance schemes etc all at a time when the far east are supplying kit at half the cost we can make it for! The people running the EU seem to forget where all the money comes from to pay their wages - if we go out of business then all the money goes to China via import firms who don't even bother paying lipservice to the regs and just dissapear whenever the authorities start chasing them.
Look its perfectly simple - you get another bin/insert for existing bin where you dispose of electrical/electronic equipment like for example all these "environmentally friendly low energy bulbs" (AKA compact fluorescents). Oh and we all dispose of those correctly yeah? Like hell we do.
Companies pay a surcharge/tax to govt for picking up the waste, govt (if they had a brain between all of them) would see that this is a bin full of VALUABLE recycling which they have already been paid for but they don't and they won't.
The UK is a "can't do" country and until the civil service (heh now there's an oxymoron after this weeks events eh?) is reduced to perhaps 40% of its current size it will remain so. Too many talentless people with too much time on their hands justifying their own position/pension by imposing pointless rules on the rest of us.
When the company I work for needs to clear out it's "IT Spares" cupboard, we convert electrical waste into scrap metal (which is easy to dispose of) by just dumping everything around the back of the car park, covering it in diesel and throwing on a bag full of kittens.
Woosh! - stick that in your carbon offset, fuckers!
"80% by weight of goods purchased are discarded within two years"
Eh?!?!? Most electrical items come with at least 3 years warranty, but even then I haven't had anything that hasn't lasted at least 4 years. TV's, fridges and servers are the real heavyweights amongst the WEEE categories and I doubt whether they would only be expected to last 2 years.
Mind you, politicians chucking all of their stuff every two years might account for it, after all they aren't even paying for their pron anymore ;)
I'm absolutely sick of them championing environmental causes in their PR line and rhetoric, and then torpedoing absolutely any local, national or transnational legislation / directives / initiatives which aim to clean up the filthy mess that their friends in industry, or we the public, are making.
Renewable energy - no funding or support, and do their best to undermine wind. Instead, they try to force through new nuclear power stations, at the behest of the power industry.
Build as many new roads as possible and deliberately underfund rail improvements.
Try to push through as many airport expansions as possible, on the basis of fixed and completely erroneous fears about our business environment becoming less competitive if we don't expand capacity massively. In doing so, consistently lie about environmental implications and deliberately mislead the public.
Recycling. Whine and cry to the EU, and provide little or no support to local authorities in the form of national recycling infrastructure (it's non-existant).
GMO & herbicides / pesticides. Rely on Monsanto, Bayer and their ilk for 'impartial' advice. On the basis of this advice, decide that everything is hunky-dory and that we must proceed with GM and use even more agrichemicals ....... and we absolutely mustn't ban any of the really nasty chemicals, as other countries in Europe are beginning to do - even go as far as to set up some institute to 'get to the bottom' of the bee colony collapse disorders - saying that it might be parasites, a virus, or fungal infections ....... of course, this is merely a diversion - the cause is known, and it's pesticides.
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