Reused and ready to go

The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive is finally here and, after a lot of work, the reuse sector is now being counted as an essential player. The Waste Paper talks to Chief Executive of the Furniture Reuse Network (FRN) Paul Smith about how the sector is gearing up for implementation in July

The UK Government's publication of the WEEE Regulations and Guidance was finally released last month. It lays out the requirements on producers, retailers, local authorities and others involved in WEEE and, having waited with baited breath, it heralded good news for the reuse sector.

The regulations state that reuse of whole Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) is not only to be encouraged, but that producer compliance schemes (PCS) are required to include reuse activity in the evidence producers need to discharge their obligations. What's more, equipment found to be unsuitable for reuse can be returned to the system established by a PCS for the treatment and recycling of WEEE, and is not regarded as non-household WEEE because it came from a reuse group. In short, charities and voluntary reuse groups across the country are set to become a major part of the UK WEEE infrastructure. After seven years of working with the government at a UK and EU level, the FRN and its members can't wait to get started.

With the expected increase in business opportunities in mind, a trading arm, FRN Enterprises, was created at the end of last year - a company limited by share, where the only shareholder is the FRN - to ensure that the work members interested in contracting should be separated from the work of the FRN charity. "FRN Enterprise is the social enterprise, FRN is the charity," says Paul Smith, Chief Executive of FRN. "It allows FRN the charity to focus on our social objectives and FRN Enterprises to deal with our waste objectives, enabling a clearer division of responsibilities between different parts of the organisation. There was a concern that we were becoming too waste driven, and in particular too WEEE driven, and not enough social driven."

The trading arm is currently negotiating contracts for its members with the WEEE compliance schemes. "Some compliance schemes will contract directly with us, some with our members with a requirement that they're regulated through FRN Enterprises - because they don't want to have to deal with checking out all these organisations. We do the initial work with the compliance scheme, find out what their requirements are, and then get them together with our members. Our members will then put in contract bids to run part of the service of that compliance scheme in the area where they are based, with us sat here holding the ring, advising members and making sure they are compliant," Smith explains. "There are particular reasons why we can't just go in and be a national scheme with a set price for the whole country - because then we'd be a cartel and breaching competition law. So we have to leave our members open to put their own bids forward and to put their own prices forward."

FRN Enterprises has already begun work with the biggest compliance schemes and hopes to eventually be working with them all. "Our deal with REPIC led to a flurry of phone calls from a number of the other schemes. [See The Waste Paper February 2007, REPIC and FRN join forces] We've been talking with B2B, Valpak, and a number of the reprocessors, such as Sims, because anything we can't reuse will end up at its facilities. And, of course, we've also been talking with local authorities, working very closely with DTI and Defra. We have got some strong connections with groups and we want to ensure that the WEEE Directive does what it intends to do which is increase the amount of items that are reused and recycled ."

Indeed, it seems that the reuse sector has got a lot of support. Environment Minister Ben Bradshaw has recently written a letter on behalf of the third sector to local authorities echoing Anthony Lord's insistence that under paragraph 15 of the Controlled Waste Regulations, 'authorities are permitted to charge charities for collection of waste, but not disposal'. Bradshaw is urging that authorities should consider paying recycling and reuse credits to third sector organisations where their activities are complementary to the authority's aims of reducing, reusing and recycling. In the process it suggests that waiving tipping fees at civic amenity sites to promote partnership working is advisable.

The news that the reuse sector will be a major player in the WEEE Directive has spread like proverbial wildfire, with a number of charitable IT reusers joining the FRN recently - something the organisation is keen to encourage. "Our membership has risen from 130 to 298 in the last year. Some of that would have been because of the WEEE directive. There isn't a national network for the IT sector, so they are coming to us."

With this flurry of new members (the FRN currently has 190 members that reuse whole EEE) it is planning to coordinate the development of a UK-wide reuse and logistics network of facilities known as ARCs (Appliance Reuse Centres). According to the FRN, there are around 30 of these sites, which will offer a 'hub and spoke' infrastructure to aid collection, sorting, bulking up and onward transportation of WEEE, while centralising repair and reuse capacity for distribution to the local reuse sector. "We are encouraging our members to set up authorised treatment facilities. I think as more come on stream, FRN Enterprises will only be dealing with those that are entrepreneurial. The vast majority of our members are socially focused and they'll take WEEE from organisations within FRN Enterprises. At the moment we've got about 30 hubs, at some point we'll have 50 to 60 hubs around the UK that are taking the WEEE and repairing it. But it will be more than they need, so they will pass the rest or sell the rest to the other organisations in their area.

"What we've got within the FRN is strong county networks," says Smith. "In a county network, of say eight to a dozen organisations, you might have one or two who are going to specialise on the WEEE side, but can supply the whole of their county. This is a model that we would recommend because what we don't want is lots and lots of organisations developing huge overheads to deal with the WEEE when it's actually more efficient and effective for a small number to specialise. Now it's not for us to decide who that is, we want groups to come together at a local level and agree that amongst themselves.

"In quite a lot of counties this has already been done. Some of our members have set up the ARC model of facilities and have had them running for two or three years now - dealing with a quarter of a million items. What we hope is that this will rise to half maybe three quarters of a million over the next year/18 months.

The issue is funding: "Quite a few members were funded by CRED and there isn't an equivalent and so most of the funding that is going to be available is through loans, from people like Futurebuilders or other lending vehicles. Our members set them up, but we will help get the work to make them viable. We feel there are plenty of items to feed the beast once the directive is implemented because the amount disposed of - that our members never get hold of - is enormous."

In light of this, FRN is developing its own accreditation system to give assurances to PCSs and others on the quality and competencies of its members' reuse services. "We can't recommend organisations to take on contracts if we don't know that they are good enough or that they comply with all the relevant legislation, licensing requirements, etc. We are talking about multi-million pound contracts coming into our sector. We cannot be in a position where one organisation fails to meet the standards and then loses contracts for 30 others because the organisation we are working with walks away. So, we have to have some sort of system of compliance to ensure that our members working on these contracts actually have the capacity, the ability, the facilities and are meeting all the legal requirements to actually take that work on.

"In many respects, what we are doing is following our European sister organisations like KVK and Flanders where they have, over time, developed a stronger regulatory role which makes it easier to go to government and say that our sector is a quality sector, not just a niche sector."

The FRN is working with the UK accreditation service, which oversees accreditation services all over the country, the Environment Agency, SEPA and the Department of Environment in Northern Ireland. "We are hoping to get our members a nationally recognised standard. We're working with the people we want the contracts with, to make sure the scheme we've got actually dovetails in well with the ATFs so that we can avoid double regulation for our members. We are hoping to help guide our members through all the requirements they have through having this system in place."

According to Smith, schemes that are already operating with good practice and have been taking note of documents the FRN has produced over the years, like Fit for Reuse , shouldn't have any problems becoming WEEE compliant.   "We are expecting somewhere in between 20 and 30 per cent of our membership to want to get involved in the level of contracting we are looking at. But those that step up, in terms of wanting to be involved in enterprises' work, the vast majority will be compliant already, it is just a question about making sure they are documenting that they are compliant. The most onerous thing is not getting the licence, or making sure the vehicle is running properly, very often it is the administration that goes with it. One of the things about the WEEE Directive is a huge requirement for paperwork and IT systems that allows organisations to be able to give accurate info that items have been reused and which items have been reused."

So, what does FRN Enterprises get out of helping members to get contracts with compliance schemes? Well, if an item that has been diverted to a reuse group through help from the FRN Enterprises is reused, FRN Enterprises gets 50p. Where members have a transportation contract, again FRN will receive 50p per tonne from a fee that is built into the contract.

"For the first time, the FRN's success depends upon the success of its members. In the past, the FRN's success was measured in writing good funding bids, whereas now we have an intimate link in terms of our success and our members' success. It ties us in much more closely to our members' performance and activity, which I think is a good thing and a good relationship to have. If our members are not successful, F