Legislation - IT disposal - WEEE Directive
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Hazardous Waste Directive - July 2005
Essentially replacing the older Special Waste system, the new legislation has two major impacts on businesses with redundant IT equipment.
Firstly it reclassifies CRT monitors as hazardous material for the first time in UK law along with other hazardous IT equipment such as UPS batteries.
Secondly it requires any site that produces more than 200Kgs of such waste product per annum to register with the Environment Agency as a producer of Hazardous Waste. Thereafter the movement and treatment of that material has to be carried out in accordance with strict guidelines.
WEEE Directive - June 2006
Adopted in the UK in 2007, the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Directive is an EU wide directive designed to make manufacturers and importers (the 'producer') responsible for the cost of disposal of redundant equipment. The Directive sets targets for recovery and recycling across ten categories of products, increasing over the first few years of implementation.
Environment Act 1990
Establishing the concept of the Duty of Care in relation to the handling of waste, including IT waste, this obligates those responsible for such waste in a business to ensure disposal takes place in an environmentally sound and ethical manner. Both individuals and company executives can face serious legal consequences should they ignore this obligation.
Data Protection Act 1998
The original Act of 1984 was updated to include specific provision for electronic data and set out eight principles of data protection. Of major note was the legal responsibility for Data Controllers within organisations to adhere to these principles that include the secure removal of all electronic data from equipment entering the public domain.
Other Legislation
There is a raft of other legislation that supports and compliments the key laws above. These include the restrictions on trans-border shipment of IT waste (dangerously many disposal agents illegally ship IT waste abroad without license to do so), the Batteries Directive and Landfill Directive which prohibit the type of material that can be land-filled and how material should be pre-treated and forthcoming legislation that will further restrict and limit how redundant IT can be disposed of.