CKS to launch WEEE facility

IT recycling firm CKS has announced details of its eco-friendly WEEE treatment facility

IT disposal, recycling and reuse specialist CKS has announced plans for a new £8m waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) treatment facility designed to cope with the increase in demand expected when the controversial WEEE directive passes into law next July.

The company said the new 56,000 square foot facility in Gloucestershire will open at the beginning of April next year and will boast 45,000 tonnes of treatment capacity and best practices that exceed the WEEE directive's requirements by incorporating both data destruction services and safe disposal.

The site will also include onsite plastics reprocessing capabilities designed to cope with IT systems that increasingly blur the line between plastics and electronics and reduce the amount of recyclate currently being exported to Asia for processing.

Under the WEEE directive hardware manufacturers will be primarily responsible for disposing of their corporate customers' IT equipment and many firms, such as HP and Dell, already run WEEE-compliant take-back schemes.

However, Derek Morgan, head of strategy at CKS said the new facility would be aimed at customers that require disposal processes that exceed WEEE's legal requirements.

He argued that firms with particularly high environmental standards or sensitive data on their systems may choose to negotiate back responsibility for WEEE disposal from their supplier so that they can use a specialist disposal firm such as CKS. "Many of the manufacturers' take-back schemes do not offer data destruction services, but we can fulfill all data and waste obligations from the same site," he added.

Phil Sprason, managing director of the new facility, argued there was an ethical responsibility for firms to embrace IT disposal practices that exceed WEEE's requirements. "The recycling targets… simply reinforce a minimum, pan-European expectation," he said in a statement. "Defra are rightly concerned that local standards will in fact reduce to this lowest common denominator, when what we need is continuing improvement."