About Weee Netherlands

Reint Sekhuis founded Weee Netherlands with 10 years of experience under his belt as the owner of an e-waste recycling plant. It is the start of the second independent product collective in the Netherlands. From the outset, many producers, municipalities and retailers have been enthusiastic about the service-oriented and social approach and more and more parties choose to switch to us. Producers can also contact us for assistance when registration abroad.

The focus is on innovation. Practical knowledge translates into setting up inclusive social sorting centres for e-waste throughout the Netherlands. We also set up shop collections differently: customised, CO2-neutral services and the collection of voluminous EPS packaging. With the introduction of the e-waste race, we involve municipalities, pupils and local residents in the collection.

Collecting more is an important task for the producer systems. Together with PostNL and Fietskoerier, we are successfully pioneering collection via parcel delivery. We are also in dialogue with Coolblue about taking back on delivery. Despite successful pilots in Amsterdam, Groningen and Dordrecht, it does not result in national implementation.

Now that not one, but two parties are giving substance to Producer Responsibility, a new dynamic is created. Complementary collection systems will allow producers, municipalities and retailers to choose from different solutions from that moment on. As a result, more is collected and more social and circular initiatives are being launched.

Through our membership of Social Enterprise NL, we symbolise our founding ambition: we want to make a positive impact on the climate and society. Weee Netherlands is the important founder of today’s inclusive e-waste centres. Where environmental challenges go hand in hand with caring for people who find it difficult to find a job independently.

In 2018, the percentage that focuses on collection and recycling of e-waste is 59%. According to regulations, this must be 65% in 2019. Together with chain players and Wecycle, we draw up the Plan of Action 65%. High-impact collection methods will only succeed if both collectives work together in this. In practice, this proves to be difficult because both Weee Netherlands and Wecycle represent their own constituency, each with its own approach.

The ministry decides to change the interpretation of producer responsibility and agrees to a Universal Binding Declaration (UBD) requested by Wecycle. The result is that producers, municipalities and retailers no longer have freedom of choice, but have to join a single system. The new name of Wecycle will be “Stichting OPEN”. They promise the ministry to reach 65% collection within 2 years.

With the Universal Binding Declaration (UBD), our current role as a producer collective also ends. Around 250 people now have a job directly or indirectly through Weee Netherlands. A cooperation agreement will be concluded with Stichting OPEN as of 1 March 2021, in which our collection, recycling, sorting and reuse activities will be continued. This makes us an implementing organisation for Stichting OPEN.

As awareness grows that a circular economy is important for our future, more and more people are discovering Weee Netherlands. We are approached by schools, institutions, municipalities and companies with the main goal of making more repair and reuse possible and reusing raw materials for as long as possible. This suits us down to the ground and together with our partners, we will get to work!

From our location in Apeldoorn, we work on new initiatives to make repair and reuse possible in a social and sensible way. Among other things, we set up Stichting Zonnext. The foundation facilitates municipalities, housing associations and institutions to make the extension of the lifespan of solar panels socially accessible in a high-quality manner. We work with energy companies on a structure in which charging stations that are renewed are given a new lease of life, or parts of which are reused. A technical test centre is set up for this purpose.

The legal target of 65% aimed at collection and recycling is not achieved. Stichting OPEN states that the focus should be more on circularity and reuse and less on recycling.  The ministry also agrees with this. In this way, reuse is preferred over recycling and should become a permanent feature in the e-waste management structure for which producers are responsible.

Together with Stichting OPEN, we see opportunities to work more intensively together to promote collection activities, repair, reuse and recycling of e-waste, in addition to the implementation activities of e-waste collection. The various initiatives must reinforce each other and must be anchored in circular objectives, the waste management structure and our society. It goes without saying that this is done with joint partners. Only then can we successfully close chains with each other!