The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) EU directive finally came into force in the UK this month almost two years late.

Is that because Brits care so little about what happens to their land once it's filled and the poison's underground? And now that someone's doing something about it, do they have the systems in place to check on whether the various players actually follow the new legislation?

I quote from the letter sent out by Jeanne Grey, Assistant Director of WEEE Implementation Team to local authorities and posted on the site of the Department of Trade and Industry:

"Historically in the UK, household WEEE has either not been separately collected from other forms of waste, or where it has been separately collected it has not been treated prior to reprocessing (with the exception recently of refrigeration equipment containing ozone depleting substances (ODS), cathode ray tube containing equipment (which contains lead), and gas discharge lamps (which contain mercury).

Where WEEE has been recycled in the UK prior to the WEEE Regulations this has primarily been undertaken for purely commercial reasons to obtain the value from secondary metals."

If a developed country such as Britain finds it so difficult to contain its pollution what can others be expected to do? Does noone really care?

http://www.dti.gov.uk/innovation/sustainability/weee/page30269.html