RE: Commission acts to guarantee UK Consumer rights under the Guarantees Directive

["Kenneth Watt" <kwatt@xxxxxxx>]

> I _am_ an environmentalist. I recycle significantly more than I chuck.=
I
> take public transports for 80% of my journeys. I willingly pay a
premium
> and buy a lot of what we eat from local, organic, producers. I do not<= BR> > buy clothes made from man-made fibres...
>
> ... But I'm not happy to go the next step and say that because _I_ do<= BR> > these things, then they should become mandatory for everyone.

Whilst in principle I agree with the notion on recycling the practise
turns out to be far harder than the idea, as ever.

In Germany there was a grand experiment on reclaiming parts and pure
gold from old TVs (apparently a lot of gold is used in production) and
the cost of reclaiming it far exceeded the cost of just buying new
components. Sadly the same is true in our industry, the cost of
reclamation is just staggering and yet, the EU in their wisdom, have
decided that it all has to happen.

So, the result of this is that we can now no longer legally carry away a used door panel for a fridge, for example, as if we get caught with one
onboard a van then we can be subject to up to =A35000 worth of fines. To legally carry it we need a Waste Management Licence, which given the
cost of implementing is a non-starter as well as specialist storage etc. to go with that. Funnily enough, if it's a new panel we can carry it! ;)
Then, if we exchange a product for a customer, to simply dump the old
one at a council waste centre costs =A353 +VAT, more than we get paid for the service call in a good many cases, so it becomes the customer's
problem to arrange for disposal.

IIRC, both Comet and Currys now will not collect any refrigeration
product for this very reason; they have to dump the responsibility onto
the customer as well now.

All in all, not commercially viable!

So recycling, yeah it probably will happen, but IMO only when the
resources are so depleted that we all have no choice but to pay the
premium to make use of it.

K.

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