Raising WEEE awareness

In the WEEE recast it was determined that starting 2016, 85% of the WEEE arisings need to be returned in order to be recycled and used as raw material input for new products. In order to close the material loop future legislation makes it clear that all parties involved in the supply chain are made responsible to succesfully meet this target.

Meeting ambitious targets starts where the product becomes waste; most of the time WEEE arises for the first time with the consumers. If consumers are not well aware of the meaning of the crossed out wheelie bin there will be no collection, no recycling, and in the long run not enough material for future production.

So raising awareness is the key and in this regard some really creative initiatives have been put forward. One of them is called “Mobile man”:

Mobile man is not mobile at all and can’t make a phonecall even though he was made out of more than hundred mobile phones. Mobile man is a 2 meter tall robot weighing 22 kilos. His whereabouts are in China where mobile man is trying hard to inspire the chinese people not to throw their obsolete phones in the bin, but to have them recycled instead.

This idea originated from Nokia but is not new; Mobile man is a small version of WEEE man. WEEE man is 7 meter high and weighs 3,3 tonne. This weight represents the total amount of electric and electronic waste (aka WEEE) like obsolete washing machines, TV’s, toasters, PC’s etc. that is discarded by an average consumer during his life.


Mobile Man (left) & WEEE Man (right)

Mobile Man and WEEE Man are trying to raise WEEE awareness in order to prevent obsolete equipment from being thrown in the bin. The e-waste can be a source for valuable materials (also referred to as urban mining) like nickel copper, aluminum and ferous metals. The raw materials derived from the e-waste close the loop where they are used for the manufacturing of new products .

In the Netherlands recycling of obsolete electronic equipment is encouraged by Wecycle.