Electronic waste illegally dumped in developing countries

The Industry Council for Electronic Equipment Recycling (ICER) agreed this was a worrying problem but felt once WEEE was implemented it would help end this.

The problems caused by WEEE can also be lessened if less toxic materials are used said Greenpeace, which is campaigning for companies to speed up removal of key toxic chemicals.

It said a recent Mori-Ipsos poll for the organisation found consumers would be willing to pay more for environmentally friendly PCs. UK consumers said they would be willing to pay as much as £64 extra for green PCs.

This campaign should be helped by another environmental law that comes into force from 1 July this year.

The Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive aims to minimise the environmental impact of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) by reducing the quantities of four heavy metals and two brominated flame retardants in these products.

Greenpeace has publicly praised some companies such as Dell and Nokia for giving dates to phase out or reduce hazardous materials in their products.

Dell has said it will stop using  brominated flame retardants and polyvinyl chloride, commonly used in PC equipment by 2009.

However it criticised other such as Toshiba, Lenovo, IBM, Apple and others for refusing to make any comment on their plans.

Greenpeace said if consumers were wiling to pay extra, this showed there was no excuse for companies to continue to use many of the toxic chemicals found in computer equipment.

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