Last month our online poll honed in one of the industry’s most complex waste streams – WEEE. It’s a topic we often talk about on our site – partly because the subject rarely leaves the media headlines and also because we have many WEEE Shredders in our range here at Untha. It can be hard to find the right one. 

But we wanted to gather your thoughts on the application too. So, our poll question for July asked website visitors for their thoughts on the best way to process WEEE. A mere 12% of respondents voted for the manual breakdown of equipment by hand whilst 64% said that they believe mechanical methodologies are most effective.

We were surprised to see that only 21% of participants selected the ‘combined’ method, which we’ll revisit in a little more detail shortly. And finally 3% of voters couldn’t decide. So what do we think of the findings? Ultimately, there is a valid rationale to pursue different processing methods – no single approach is entirely suitable or unsuitable in all circumstances.

Providing it is carried out by certified and experienced professionals, the manual breakdown of equipment enables it to be inspected for potential reuse. Sometimes simple repairs are all that are required, for example, for the asset to continue to have a useful life. A breakdown regime – carried out by hand – can also help to remove some key component parts for recycling. There are instances, however, when this process is too time consuming, labour intensive or onerous.

For various reasons, mechanical breakdown or the shredding of WEEE may therefore be more appropriate. In an ideal scenario, WEEE specialists would assess the methodology best-suited to the waste stream at hand, and would deploy the right process, accordingly, to ensure compliance with both the waste hierarchy and all regulatory frameworks. That’s why we were surprised that more people didn’t select the ‘combined’ method.

Our chairman Chris Oldfield delved a little deeper into the subject of WEEE handling, in a recent online article for the CIWM Journal. If you have any queries about these poll results, Chris’s original article, or the e-waste shredders in our range, please don’t hesitate to call 0845 450 5388, email sales@untha.co.uk or use the ‘Contact Us’ tab at the footer of every web page. Finally, our online poll is having a little summer break! We’ll be back in the Autumn with more industry questions for you to vote on!