After just reading Guy Kewney’s article on “Recycling-otherwise known as dumping” (PCW, January 2006) and how horrified he was that people who claim to ‘recycle’ are not doing anything of the sort. Spare a thought for those who do what they claim.

I belong to a company who practices what it preaches, and does offer the service.

A number of years ago a colleague and myself set out to provide an asset recovery business on the back of the WEEE and RoHS initiative. Knowing that in the future this would be the way forward when the legislation was introduced fully. We successfully set up the business and offered a process which would take back, refurbish, recycle and resell IT and telecom equipment.

The process impressed a major finance company who we now do business with. They understood that this would be a cost to them, but used the resale value to offset the cost of  providing this service.

We also partnered with a waste disposal company, who takes the waste from our process, ie defunct CRT’s, plastics, electronics, metals etc and disposes of them ethically and lawfully. Of the items disposed CRT’s are a cost item, the others we share the revenue after the disposer has taken out his processing costs. For example, electronic items get shredded into flakes, and sent to a processor where they smelt and recover metals.

There are those who want to make a fast buck, there are others who do not care and then there are those who want to do it right.

It all boils down to cost, if everyone gets together we can make it work and everyone can get a share of the pie. Albeit who pays for it in the end, us. Even if the producers of new machines are charged, they will add this cost in the price of a new machine, so we pay in the end.

As Guy says, you make think you are smart avoiding the cost of recycling, but you may not in 20 years time!

Jeff Jones