WEEE Compliance (Recycling)

Recycling

The purpose of the separate collection of waste electrical and electronic equipment, and disadvantages of disposing them as unsorted municipal waste.

Waste electrical and electronic equipment is not waste in the usual sense of the word. On the one hand, this equipment may contain hazardous components; on the other, it always contains valuable raw materials. For these reasons, waste electrical and electronic equipment must not be disposed of as residual waste (‘municipal waste’). Doing so may cause serious environmental damage – including personal damage – and will lead to the unrecoverable loss of valuable raw materials
The following options for recycling and collection are available:

Waste electrical and electronic equipment may be disposed of through public collection points. The ERP’s web site (European Recycling Platform, erp-recycling.org ) provides lists of available collection points for individual countries. SKIDATA and its customers who purchase a product agree contractually on how waste equipment is to be deposited at a collection point and who is responsible to do so.
Reasons for reuse, recycling and other forms of recovery of waste electrical and electronic equipment.

Electrical and electronic equipment contains a variety of raw materials, such as iron, aluminum, copper, precious metals or rare-earth elements.
Obviously, these raw materials should be and are desired to be recovered. Natural resources are limited, and their exploitation always constitutes an interference with nature. Reusing electrical and electronic equipment therefore has an environment-saving double benefit: first, because the equipment and the hazardous material they contain are not deposited as ‘municipal waste’ or incinerated; and second, because it enables the environmentally friendly recovery of raw materials that otherwise would have to be extracted by exploiting natural resources. What is intended and achieved is a (material) cycle, which is what ‘re-cycling’ is all about.

However, professional recycling of electrical or electronic equipment is only the last step. SKIDATA is aware of its responsibility and is dedicated to designing its equipment with long product life cycles and repairability in mind. Once a device has well and truly reached its end of life, SKIDATA will provide professional recycling instructions to the collection company.
Potential effects on the environment and human health resulting from hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment.

It is particularly important to ensure the professional and environmentally safe disposal/recycling of hazardous substances, i.e., heavy metals, hexavalent chromium and certain flame retardants, but also the batteries and accumulators used in electrical and electronic equipment. Hazardous materials in SKIDATA products are in most cases limited to batteries/accumulator batteries. All of the above-mentioned materials and components are hazardous to the environment if disposed improperly. At the same time, most of them are valuable. Special treatment is required to mitigate short-term and long-term environmental damage and to recover the raw materials.
What is the wheeled bin symbol all about?

The crossed-out wheeled bin is the symbol for separate special waste collection. It can be found on electrical and electronic equipment as well as on batteries and accumulators. The symbol indicates visually that, for the reasons outlined above, the product has to be recycled professionally once it has reached its end of life.

On many devices (except for batteries/accumulator batteries) there is a thick black line underneath the symbol. This indicates that the device has been placed on the market after 2005. It may be omitted if the date of placement on the market is specified explicitly. SKIDATA always states the week of production on the type plates of its devices and therefore uses the symbol without the line.

Normally the crossed-out wheeled bin symbol is printed on the device’s type plate. On products that are not fitted with a type plate, the symbol is affixed in an easily visible location. In exceptional cases where a product’s properties prevent the attachment of the symbol, it will be shown on the packaging and/or mentioned in the product manual.

Recycling Information