Return
The second step in this "wheel of life" is returning end-of-life appliances or Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). Consumers are not allowed to dispose of WEEE through other than dedicated collection points.
Retailers, traders and manufacturers for short 'producers' are obliged to take back WEEE free of cost and independent of any purchase for all types of products they sell. For instance if a retailer sells only Apple computers, he has to take back also Dell or HP computers but not washing machines.
Producers have to dispose of collected WEEE safely either through the four independent Producer Responsibility Organisations (PROs see INOBAT, SENS, SLRS, SWICO) or by setting up their own management system.
The legal basis for this liberal and consensus driven system
is the national Ordinance on the Return, the Taking Back and the
Disposal of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (ORDEE of 14.01.1998, SR 814.016). One of the main goals of the ORDEE is to prevent WEEE from reaching municipal solid waste!
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Refrigerator: SENS started 1991 with charging a pre disposal fee – the vignette – for refrigerators, but later changed in favour of the ARF. Today, users return used refrigerators to any point of sale or to one of the 510 SENS collection points. If the equipment is too heavy to transport it to a collection point, SENS organises the pick up for a fee. In 2004, over 13000t of cooling units were taken back separately. |
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Battery: Batteries and rechargeable batteries contain valuable basic materials and harmful substances and therefore need to be disposed of separately. One third of the used batteries is returned to local authority collection points, one third to retailers and the rest to schools, the administration etc. There is no need for the user to separate built-in batteries from the rest of the equipment, as the ARF for the built-in batteries are included in the ARF for the respective piece of equipment. The return rate of spent batteries reached 60% by 2001. However, the government, concerned about the high heavy metal concentration (e.g. mercury) in the household waste, set a target of 80%, which requires further efforts in the fields of raising public awarness and logistics and subsequently additional financing. |
PC: If a user returns a used PC, the ARF does not only cover the recycling fee of the PC itself but comprises the recycling of all related consumer goods (such as packaging, CD-Roms).
Light-Bulb: Light tubes and energy saving light bulbs come under the scope of the ORDEE because they contain heavy metals such as lead, mercury or yttrium. Incandescent lamps don't contain harmful substances and are therefore not categoriesed as WEEE. In 2004, about 61% of fluorescent lamps (i.e. some 5.8 million units) were disposed of separately in an environmentally sound manner. Since 1 August 2005, it has been possible for
fluorescent lamps to be returned free of charge to any retail outlet,
or to official SENS collection points.
