Principle 4: Good practice companies have procedures to manage their risks

New Zealand companies involved in the reuse and recycling of WEEE need to manage their operations in a way that minimises risks to the environment, their staff and their customers.

A number of good practice guidelines, standards and accreditation schemes have been reviewed for their applicability to New Zealand and have been used to shape this guidance.

Why have standards?

The advantages of working to a standard include:

  • a level playing field for all operators
  • a clear understanding of what is required and the systems that should be in place to meet those requirements
  • independent audit reducing the need for downstream audits and reduced overall costs.

The disadvantages include:

  • the expense and management time needed to develop a management system
  • the potential for excessively high implementation and auditing costs for small and medium-sized companies (many standards linked to trade associations also require membership fees of the organisations).

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It is important to balance the need for sound operational practices with the need to make sure smaller companies are not squeezed out of the market by imposing barriers to their operation. In the USA, the Environmental Protection Agency’s ‘Plug in to E-cycling’deals with this in the following way:

In lieu of a fully developed and certified Environmental Management System (eg, using ISO, EMAS or industry standards, such as those of the IAER) a facility has a written plan describing the facilities risk management objectives for environmental performance and compliance and its plans for attaining these objectives based on a ‘plan-do-check-act’ continual improvement model. Regular re-evaluation of environment, health and safety (EH&S) objectives and monitoring of progress towards achievement of these objectives is conducted and audited at all facilities. (EPA, 2004, pp. 6-7)

Management systems and certifications

Service providers are encouraged to gain the generic ISO 14001:2004 environmental management system, Enviromark, or industry equivalent such as the International Association of Electronics Recyclers (IAER) certification standard.

There are a number of emerging guidelines, certification schemes and accreditations that service providers can apply for. Examples include:

  • The Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) managed and operated by the American Green Electronics Council. In the EPEAT system, manufacturers declare their products’ conformance to a comprehensive set of environmental criteria in eight environmental performance categories. To participate in EPEAT, a manufacturer must sign an Agreement with EPEAT that requires them to be accurate in their declarations, and they must pay an annual fee. To maintain the credibility of the system, EPEAT regularly selects products from the registry and verifies that the declarations are accurate. New Zealand is an EPEAT registry country.
  • The WEEE label of excellence (WEEELABEX) is being implemented by the WEEE Forum, a European-based organisation. It is a certification scheme based on European standards for the collection, treatment, recovery and recycling of WEEE. It may be limited to Europe only.
  • The e-Stewards global certification program for electronics recyclers is designed to provide market incentives that drive the certification of the entire disposal chain. The e-Stewards initiative is a project of the Basel Action Network (BAN), a non-profit, charitable organisation of the United States.
  • A Basel Convention initiative has created a Partnership for Action on Computing Equipment (PACE). This group are producing guidelines and a certification scheme for facilities that reuse and/or recycle electronic waste. It is expected it will be globally applicable.

 

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Last updated:15 March 2011