The seven metre tall WEEE man
The WEEE man isn’t so wee. What is he? A seven-metre tall tall human figure made of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE, for those of you who hadn’t guessed). The WEEE man, unveiled by Canon Europe and the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts) is built out of three tons of electronic and electrical waste, apparently about what the average consumer will produce in a life time.
He will be on display London City hall for 28 days until the May 27th , when he moves to the Eden project in Cornwall.
Canon, who jointly launched the event, has said in a press release that it will "help promote and encourage better waste management and recycling in the community, in a bid to make the disposal of electrical and electronic goods as widely accepted as the recycling of newspapers, glass bottles and aluminium cans."
James Leipnik, chief of communication and corporate relations at Canon Europe added that "Last year, 1,000 business machines a month were either reused or recycled by Canon’s UK operation to prevent them being added to landfill sites. This figure represents 100 percent of the machines returned to Canon by UK businesses."
The WEEE man also draws attention to legislation going through the European parliaments at the moment, which would ensure that retailers would have to take back WEEE, inform customers of their WEEE recycling schemes and ensure that that the WEEE is recycled. A joke here would be cheap, so don’t even think about it. The UK government has announced that these laws would not come into effect until at least Janaury 2006, postponing it by 5 months.
