On Tuesday I visited an e-waste preprocessing facility in Brakne-Hoby, near Ronneby, with some MSLS students.
After a talk on the business (Stena being part of the same group as the ferry company), we had a tour of the plant.
I have written a bit of an essay on this, but the summary is this:
Producer responsibility for waste means the waste processing company has a contract with each waste producer (i.e. the original manufacturer), rather than the city/town/council (commun in Swedish, I think).
About half of the stuff going to the recycling centre is working.
The contract the processor has says no salvage: everything must be recycled through melting down and being sold on as raw materials.
The end result: Hundreds of pounds of perfectly good, working computer parts are scrapped. Turned back into copper and gold, rather than being used in second hand computers.
This just further reinforced the idea that, when the paradigm is crazy (money/growth), crazy solutions to problems abound, even when the will is good.
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