Separating the materials is more costly than what you get for them,” says Rodríguez. Authorized plants have the legal obligation to reuse 80 percent of components, including plastic, wood and other materials. Proper treatment involves avoiding environmental pollution from dangerous components found inside the appliances, and also seeks to add value to the various materials that make them up. The trouble is, there is nobody to go after violators” The decree regulating recycling is very good. Authorized plants, which have to follow complex and expensive treatment procedures, cannot compete with scrap dealers who simply extract the valuable components with no regard for safety. “They sell it to anybody,” says Fermín Rodríguez, manager of Recyberica Ambiental, a company specializing in appliance recycling. That is how these products normally end up at illegal scrapyards where they fetch higher prices than at authorized plants. There is tremendous institutional permissiveness.” Bad practicesĭelivery firms dropping off new appliances do not typically receive any money from product distributors for taking away the old ones, but simply get to keep them as payment. “The trouble is, there is nobody to go after violators. “The decree regulating recycling is very good,” says Luis Palomino, secretary general of ASEGRE, an association of hazardous waste handlers. These industry estimates are only slightly more optimistic than the CWIT report’s own conclusions. While there is no centralized database of information about e-waste in Spain, industry experts figure that about a third of it ends up at unauthorized plants that lack the technology and the trained personnel to guarantee proper reusing and recycling.Īnother third ends up in the hands of organized gangs who scavenge for parts with no control of any kind. The Environment Ministry, which only responded to questions for this report at the last moment, says it has “detected the deficiencies of the management model that has been applied over recent years” and for this reason has drawn up a new decree that incorporates “measures that will allow the data about WEEE collection and management to be improved.” Recycling requires carefully taking the appliances apart. Lack of government action is just one of the dysfunctions in a system riddled with problems. “Those powers have been transferred to regional governments.” “The difference with other countries is that there is no single authority here monitoring compliance with the rules,” says Matías Rodrigues, director general of ERP España, another e-waste manager. But Spain generates more than 750,000 tons annually. Last year, ECOLEC, one of the biggest SIGs, representing 50 percent of small and large home appliance manufacturers, handled 67,000 tons of e-waste. This ranges from between €5 and €30, depending on the appliance. These non-profits are in charge of organizing the entire recycling process, and consumers fund them with a fee they pay when they purchase a new product. That is when the Integral Management Systems (SIGs, in their Spanish acronym) were set up.
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