Stone Group has demanded that IT resellers do more to combat the problem of e-waste and has penned an open letter to the government calling for intervention to tackle the issue. The reseller argues that “urgent action” is needed to reduce the problem.
In an open letter director, Tim Westbrook said that there needed to be some real guidance from Government to sort out the problem.
The letter calls for waste from electrical and electronic equipment compliance to become mandatory for all equipment resellers. It said that resellers must demonstrate that they work with a fully accredited zero to landfill partner if they cannot take ownership of the IT asset disposal process.
Westbrook wants IT resellers to be forced to make both the volume of equipment collected from customers and what has been done with it, available to the public each year.
Westbrook said: “Resellers should no longer be allowed to shrug off the issue or blindly outsource IT asset disposal to a third party with little or no knowledge of what happens to it next. We believe that these additions to the law will help to tackle the e-waste issue from the roots, and massively reduce the volume of IT hardware being released into and damaging the environment. For years, resellers have profited from the sale of technology and contributed to the e-waste challenge, now they should be forced to play their role in tackling and mitigating it.”
Westbrook adds that the problem has led to the creation of “the ‘informal recycling industry’ and ‘e-waste farms’ in developing nations and third world countries”, which he says has led to vulnerable people including young children endangering their health for “pitiful payments”.
He also praises the introduction of the “right to repair” law which is due to come in this summer but insists that more still needs to be done.
