Vast amounts of potentially toxic e-waste are still being illegally exported from Europe despite bans and the WEEE Directive, the BBC reported yesterday.
The BBC site says that only around a third of all e-waste is thought to be treated in line with the European Union’s Waste Electrical Equipment (WEEE) Directive.
Worse, unknown amounts are still shipped to locations such as West Africa where they create serious health risks, despite a ban by the European Community in 1994.
German MEP Karl-Heinz Florenz told the BBC there was an “extraordinary” amount of illegal shipping along the European coast.
Traffickers are said to evade checks by falsely labelling goods for re-use, not marking them as electronics, or simply hiding them in the middle of shipping containers.
The BBC visited Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Europe’s busiest port and the EU’s shipping gateway to the rest of the world.
It found that while over nine million shipping containers pass through the port every year, only around three percent or so are checked.
Jim Puckett, one of the founders of Basel Action Network (BAN), told the BBC: “It really has become the crisis issue of the whole Basel Convention. It is really the fundamental, number one issue.”
As reported by The Recycler, BAN’s recently launched e-Stewards certification has been met with major global approval, including recognition by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
The scheme aims to provide independent certification for responsible companies and recycling firms that properly dispose of e-waste.