Electronic waste recycling market to grow by a third by 2017

A new report has estimated that the global electronic waste recycling marketing will grow by around a third by 2017, This will mean a figure of around $1.7bn.

In the report by global consultants Frost and Sullivan, the WEEE market was estimated at more than $1.4bn in 2011 with the growth of 4% each year for the next 5 years. One of the main causes of this increase was stated to be around government initiatives such as WEEE EU Directives to increase people and companies to recycle their WEEE waste. The member countries in the EU are required by EU law to recover 45 tonnes of electronic waste from every 100 tonnes of WEEE waste by 2016.
The electronic waste recycling market experienced a slump as a result of the global economic troubles but is now “rising from its own ashes”. A Frost & Sullivan spokesman said: “One of the main reasons that the WEEE Directive has not met with unqualified success despite the significant amount of support it has received is the ineffective implementation of legislation.

“Some of the key countries such as the UK, for instance, have had significant problems in its implementation in the first place due to the difficulty in assigning ‘producer responsibility’ as stipulated by the legislation.”