WEEE Directive

We had telephones, but we did not have mobile phones. I am sure that my hon. Friend will want to speak for himself on that matter. Since mobile phones have been around, I have probably gone through about 30 of them. Some of them have been lost; goodness knows where they have ended up. We want to ensure that they are recyclable, and that we are not storing up mountains of mobile phones, to name one specific item, for the future. Landfill is a wasting asset in our country. We must look at ways of ensuring that we recycle as much as we possibly can. I mentioned the digital switchover, which will be completed in 2012, alongside the fact that LCD and plasma-screen TVs came on the market at roughly the same time. People are now looking again at their electrical items. A TV has a shelf life of about 10 years before it needs to be disposed of, but I suspect that as far as the technology is concerned, most TVs’ lifetime is a lot shorter than that. In the past five years, high-definition television has been introduced, and those who bought LCD or plasma-screen TVs five years ago might be thinking, ““Shavings! If only I’d waited, I could have had a high-definition television now.”” Well, to use a high-definition television, they will need a high-definition Sky Plus box or its equivalent. What will happen to all the old equipment, as well as to the obsolete TVs and video recorders that we discussed earlier? The hon. Gentleman mentioned video recorders, which themselves are becoming obsolete as people move to DVD players and recorders. My family was peculiar in that we chose neither Betamax nor VHS; we were one of the few families in Britain with a Grundig V2000. I think that it was obsolete when we bought it. It is just as well, because nobody in the family could work it—it was Jodrell Bank technology. It did a lot of things that we could not work out whether we wanted it to do; all we wanted was a simple video recorder. A number of such items must be disposed of. When my washing machine broke down the other day, I went out and chose a new one. I asked the person who sold me the new one, ““Of course, you will take away the old one, won’t you?”” They looked horrified, and said, ““I’m not so sure we can do that any more.”” It comes down to businesses’ ignorance of what can and cannot be done. I said, ““Well, it’s going to be a bit awkward for me, because I don’t have a garden at the front where I can put it for a few days while I wait for the local authority.”” Because of many people’s lifestyles—both parents often work, for instance—we must make it as simple as possible. We certainly do not want gardens littered with electrical items while people wait for the local authority to come around. I must say that the Ribble Valley council is very good, with a keen department that takes away items and ensures that they are recycled where possible. That is important. In the end, the company from which I bought the new washing machine said, ““For a small fee, Mr. Evans, we will take away the old one.”” Thank goodness they did, but I worry about elderly people. If they turn up asking for a new electrical item and are told, ““You have to dispose of it yourself,”” that will add an extra problem. They will think, ““I’m buying a new one, but in the good old days the company would take the old one away and dispose of it.”” That is what needs to happen now. I remember some of the newspaper articles published at the time of the fridge mountains—there were amazing photographs of fridges being stockpiled. That is why we must ensure that there are businesses specialising in recycling. The hon. Gentleman mentioned his surprise that the industry was geared up far better than even he thought it would be. There must be best practice in other countries that do such things better than we do. I hope that, in connection with the directive, we can see which countries do.