Quantitative: Key figures

Key figures 2008
Key figures 2007
Key figures 2006

Introduction

The WEEE Forum is among the only multi-national centres of competence in the world when it comes to practical experience with the management of e-waste. One of the organisation's mission statements is to develop tools that allow member systems to benchmark their results with those of others, and to provide comparable and sound data to stakeholders in general. "Key Figures" is such a tool. Every year, around April-May, members are asked to provide quantitative data to a web-based software programme on the amount of electrical and electronic equipment that producers, constituents of those systems, put on the market, the quantities of WEEE that they collected, and the costs related to WEEE management.

All data are stored in a so-called "black box", i.e. members are not in a position to see other systems' quantitative data or cost structures. In addition, the overviews do not disclose the identity of the systems, averages are calculated and minimum/maximum ranges are provided. Each member can make its own overviews of the type of results it is interested in.

This year, 31 members delivered data. Seven members were not in a position to send in comprehensive and consistent data because they started operations in the course of 2007 or 2008.

This report provides an overview of the 2008 key figures and, in so doing, seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate on e-waste management matters.

Executive summary of the 2008 Key Figures

• In 2008, producers affiliated to 33 collection and recovery organisations of the WEEE Forum put more than 5 Mt of electrical and electronic equipment onto the market. The arithmetic mean average and the weighted average market input were 9.8 kg and 14.8 per inhabitant per year respectively.
• Some organisations seem to have experienced a stabilisation of sales, while others experienced, after a steady increase in the past couple of years, a decrease. In some cases this may be explained by a decrease in the number of affiliated producers, but in other cases it may reflect the decrease in overall retail sales because of the negative economic situation in 2008. Overall, some mature organisations, both nationwide organisations and those facing competition within the same national market, still see an increase in market input data compared to 2007.
• 34 organisations collected about 1.4 Mt ^[1] of WEEE, which is about 50 per cent of all officially reported WEEE collection. Member organisations collected, in weighted average ^[2] terms, 4.03 kg/inhabitant of WEEE. One organisation reached a collection target of 16.5 kg/inhabitant.
• WEEE systems collected more than two-thirds of their WEEE from municipal collection facilities. This demonstrates that municipal collection facilities continue to be crucial in collection infrastructure.
• The two organisations that collected most in 2007, collected less per capita in 2008. This may be related to the contracting economic situation of the 2nd half of year 2008: as consumers buy less electronics, less waste electronics is being returned.
• 28 organisations have provided data for both 2007 and 2008. 7 of them collected lesser quantities per capita while 21 collected higher.
• Some continued to fail to get hold of valuable WEEE, while others saw a stabilisation in the trend.
• 29 organisations spent a total of about €382,000,000 on the collection, transport, treatment of WEEE, and the administration of the organisation. Those 29 WEEE Forum members collected 1.3 Mt WEEE, which translates to a weighted average of the specific costs of 0.30 €/kg.
• Most organisations managed to lower their operational costs in the past couple of years for nearly all WEEE categories. This mainly results from decreasing treatment costs.
• For quite a few WEEE categories and sub-categories costs of compliance with Annex II of the Directive prevail over possible valuable material.
• Eight organisations reported negative treatment costs, i.e. minus values, for large household appliances. The weighted average is a profit of €40 per tonne.

^[1] All 40 member organisations taken together collected approximately 1.5 Mt in 2008 (source: compilation of individual members' figures in January 2009).
^[2] A weighted average is an average that takes into account the proportional relevance of each component, rather than treating each component equally.