Labour-intensive processes offer excellent opportunities for SROI. The collection, sorting and treatment chain of WEEE is such a process. Starting with the civic amenity site, someone can be employed as recipient at the container for WEEE. This recipient can pre-sort waste and can therewith prevent contamination of both container and waste with hazardous components (e.g. glass and lamps), as well as pollution (e.g. frying pans which still contain grease). Furthermore, in the civic amenity site defective devices are accepted, stripped of cables and put down safely.
Weee Netherlands has to date started four projects with municipal partners. Through sorting and dismantling operations, they process WEEE. Polluting components are removed. For example, the capacitor, the concrete and the circuit board are taken out of washing machines. This way, the processors that will recycle the washing machine will end up with cleaner material and thus will achieve better recycling results. People with a distance to the labour market manually perform above actions.
In total, 65 jobs (fte) were created to date. With this, municipalities and municipal waste authorities implement legislation entered into force on January 1, 2015. The employees receive intensive guidance during the work programme. Regional implementation of sorting and processing operations furthermore ensures a limitation in transport mileage and a reduction of CO2 emissions. The future of WEEE sorting and recycling can be seen as an opportunity to put flesh on the bones of sustainability, corporate social responsibility and SROI.