Catalonia could build three ‘Eiffel Towers’ each year only with waste from refrigerators, mobile phones, headphones, lamps – in short, the so-called WEEE – and would still have a few thousand tons of material left over to start building a fourth. In the first half of this year, 17,700 tons of WEEE (electrical and electronic waste) were collected in Catalonia, 6.43% more than in the same period of the previous year. The weight of the Eiffel Tower, for comparison, is only 10,000 tons. In Spain, 139,000 tons were collected, which represents a growth of 3.28%.
“This is an optimistic figure that allows us to say that collection has increased in Catalonia”, said Isaac Peraire, director of the Waste Agency of Catalonia, in the framework of the 5th WEEE National Congress. Last year, 61% of WEEE was managed correctly in Catalonia. The objective established in Europe and therefore, in the Spanish state, is 65%.
“The collection objective that is imposed by Europe is equivalent to 65% measured in volume, that is, in weight, of the devices that are put on the market, calculated on the average of the last three years. This means that if 1,000 tons are put on the market, you are obliged to collect 650 kilograms,” explained Andreu Vilà, vice president of OfiRaee, a logistics coordination IT platform for the management of WEEE from municipal green or recycling points and It brings together the Collective Systems of Extended Responsibility of the Producer of Electrical Appliances (Scrap).
The biggest problem with this measurement in percentages is that “unfortunately the objective is the same for all devices and does not discriminate either the useful life or its durability,” Vilà pointed out. He also does not consider those devices that are inherited (for example, the old refrigerator that is given to a relative) nor those that are kept due to the so-called “treasure effect” (I keep my old mobile phone in a drawer, even if it no longer works). .
José Pérez, president of OfiRaee, has also highlighted the complication that theft at clean points and the existence of illegal management channels pose for the correct management of WEEE. “Sometimes this waste is lost in channels that we do not control,” Pérez introduces. This occurs, for example, when a refrigerator is abandoned on the street, instead of being taken to a Clean Point.
WEEE includes everything from lamps and mobile phones to photovoltaic panels. They are elements that become useless when they stop working and that can be highly polluting if they are not properly recycled. In addition, many of these devices contain substances such as mercury, cadmium or bromine, which can contaminate the environment. “A poorly recycled refrigerator emits greenhouse gases into the atmosphere equivalent to the emissions of a car traveling 15,000 kilometers,” Peraire exemplified.
In Catalonia, around 5 kg per inhabitant of waste electrical and electronic equipment of domestic origin are collected. The national average in Spain is 6 kg per inhabitant, with the Balearic Islands in the lead with 10 kg per inhabitant, followed by Cantabria, with 8 kg of domestic WEEE per inhabitant collected, and with the Community of Madrid in third position, also with 8 kg per inhabitant.
According to Eurostat data, in 2020 an average of 10.3 kg of waste electrical and electronic equipment was collected per inhabitant in the European Union. However, recycling practices vary between EU countries; Austria (15.7 kg/inhabitant), Finland (15.7 kg/inhabitant) and Sweden (14. kg/inhabitant) occupy the first three positions, but at the bottom are countries such as Portugal, Cyprus and Greece , which only reach 5.8 kg per inhabitant. In 2020, Spain occupied eighteenth position in the ranking, with 8.3 kg per inhabitant – two points below the European average.
