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More of the EU’s broken fridges, phones and gadgets are set to be collected and recycled, following MEPs’ approval on Thursday of new targets agreed with Council. The update to Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) legislation offers consumers new possibilities to return small waste items to retailers and will also cut red tape for businesses.



(Oslo 15.12.2011) Elretur AS has concluded an agreement with Norsk Gjenvinning Metall AS and W3E Europe AS concerning the transfer of all the shares in Eurovironment AS. The transfer to Elretur will have accounting effect from 1 January 2012. The transaction is being implemented as quickly as possible and on the assumption it will be accepted by the Norwegian Competition Authority.

From 1 January 2012, the collective agreement Elretur has with Grønt Punkt Norge will come to end. Up to now Elretur has offered its customers a collective packaging agreement with Grønt Punkt Norge, which has been very advantageous from a financial point of view. From 2012, having a customer relationship with Grønt Punkt Norge via Elretur instead of signing your own agreement will no longer result in a discount. However, Elretur will still be able to report packaging quantities to Grønt Punkt Norge (6 reports a year).

From 1 January 2012, Elretur will be reducing its environmental fees for all products. On average costs will be cut by more than 20 per cent. The rates for some products will be reduced by more than the rates for others, e.g. refrigeration appliances will see a reduction of between 33-43 per cent.

Last year, Elretur contributed to a total reduction in climate gas emissions equivalent to 340,000 metric tons of CO2. Taking a quota price for emissions of NOK 1,201 per metric ton as our starting point, the value of the reduction in emissions amounted to NOK 41 million, i.e. the social benefits cover a substantial proportion of the total costs of the take-back system for WEEE.

Do you want to read Elretur's Environmental Report? You can download it from our web-pages under Information Materiel". In Elreturs Environmental Report you can read about our collection and recovery results, as well as the activities we participate in to collect as many scrapped small electronic appliances as possible.

Gold has good conductive properties and is used in a lot of EEE. That's why a few kg of gold is recovered from the WEEE Elretur collects every year. Last year no less than 60 kg of gold was recovered from the WEEE Elretur collected from distributors and municipal recycling stations throughout Norway.

The Climate and Pollution Agency (the former SFT) has sent letters to a number of distributors of electrical and electronic equipment in which the authority describes in detail the distributors' obligation to sort, store and forward WEEE.

How does data end up in the wrong hands when you scrap your old PC, and, not least, why does data end up in the wrong hands? Ordinary users have to deal with firewalls, security codes and anti-virus software. These are necessary things that we all understand have to be in place to secure the data we work with and need to be on the servers and PCs we use.

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