Professional WEEE: over 90% collected and disposed of outside the official channels

With a view to circular economy, i waste from professional electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) they represent a real treasure for our country. The problem is that only 5-10% of the placed on the market is collected and recycled by the official systems of the producers: the management of this type of wastein fact, it is too often carried out by free market operators, or informal subjects whose methods of collection, treatment and recovery of the same are neither tracked nor reported. The natural consequence is the emergence of a fragmented organization with small and medium-sized entities where practices at the limits of the legislation and unchecked export.

For this reason in 2020 Erion Professional has implemented Exceedthe first collection and recycling program for Professional WEEE which promotes a different approach to the old B2B compliance management models. With the aim of creating value for the environment and proactively participating in the achievement of European targets, Exceed makes various personalized services available to producers and their network: from environmental training to an app to manage the free collection of WEEE. , from the simplification of document management to a dedicated call center for support and advice.

“The European Union (Legislative Decree 49/2014) asks us for a collection target of 65% between domestic WEEE and professional WEEE, compared to the one put on the market in the previous three years. We currently have a gap of more than 50%. A gap on which the professional WEEE sector must intervene, above all because the collection rate is still irrelevant compared to that of household waste “, says Daniela Valterio, president of Erion Professional.

A commitment that Erion Professional takes very seriously enough to extend the initiative, until now active for the specific industries of air conditioning (Exceed Clima) and of Horeca equipment (Exceed Food), to the sector of printers for the business world. A need also arisen as a result of the results of the study “Quantification of waste flows from electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) in the professional printer sector” created for Erion Professional from Margherita Pero, Antonio Masi And Margherita Fabbri of the Department of Management Engineering of the Politecnico di Milanowith the collaboration of Isabella Capurso ofConsulting area of ​​Interzero Italy.

The spin-off Exceed Printing, strongly desired by the producers of the Consortium’s ‘printer compartment’, therefore aims to intervene proactively in the management of this waste by raising the collection rate of the collective systems organized by the Producers, the only ones able to guarantee the high recovery objectives. The study has in fact highlighted that the phenomenon of parallel flows particularly affects the sector of professional printers which, unlike other types of equipment, have a relatively short “first” life cycle (about 3/4 years) and then become an attractive commodity for third markets.

In fact, out of 500 thousand pieces placed on the market every year (25 thousand tons), only 44% of them are handled in Italy (about 220 thousand pieces), equal to 11 thousand tons. Of these, however, only 5-10% enter the formal channel, the only one able to operate according to the principles of the circular economy, guaranteeing recovery and recycling objectives and favoring the re-insertion of secondary raw materials in new production cycles. . Another 44% is exported either as WEEE (about 7%) or as a still functioning good to be allocated to the second-hand market (37%), typically in areas of second and third World, thus completely escaping the tracking of flows. Another 10% (50 thousand) is left in the warehouse, a behavior found above all by Public administrations; finally, the remaining 2% is donated to onlus.

The analysis also shows that, among the main critical aspects related to end-of-life treatment, there are: difficulties in managing bureaucratic aspects (many process steps often considered difficult and complex), the high costs associated with the management of disposal and complexity of component recovery due to product design. For their design, in fact, the printers require particular treatment procedures. These processes have implications for both storage and logistics costs. L’extracting the tonersfor example, it is often considered an onerous practice (due to the grinding processes of the waste and the subsequent selection of materials) and this could lead some to dispose of the machines in a more summary and economic way.