On the whole I think I have a relatively adult sense of humour and tend to prefer humour that makes me smile, a knowing smile, because I've got the point, or a little chuckle, and I don't on the whole tend to laugh out loud. However today was a little different.
Now this post assumes that you know what the first three words in the title refer to, you may even know the fourth, but that isn't really important at the moment because I'm going to explain it to you anyway :). What's important is that you know the other meaning to 'wee' and by extension 'wee-wee' which isn't 'small' :) If you don't, you're not going to get this at all!
Now WEEE is an acronym for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment and is a set of instructions issued by the European Union on how to safely dispose of said equipment in an environmentally friendly way which each of the member states had then to enact their own law to comply with. It places legal obligations on manufacturers and suppliers of electrical and electronic equipment to arrange for its disposal in a responsible fashion. This usually means sending it to China where it gets chopped up, burnt thus causing untold damage to their environment but not to ours; well at least not yet. Not that it was necessarily the intention of WEEE to cause China to be buried under a mountain of silicon and plastic but capitalism has a habit of finding the cheapest option round any 'inconvenient' legislation.
Now this is known as the 'WEEE Directive' - you can see where this is going, can't you?
Now I don't usually resort to 'scatological' humour, well not much :), but I was reading a company's WEEE policy document today and it absolutely creased me up. I could not stop laughing. I was completely doubled up in my own private little hysteria. I mean what is the WEEE Directive? Is it an instruction TO WEEE? Or perhaps the direction of said WEEE after the instruction TO WEEE has been complied with (downwards for women, everywhere else but, for men?). And what are we to make of the following from a real policy document?
"By joining the Valpak scheme we are contributing to the establishment of a network of Designated Collection Facilities (DCFs) where consumers may dispose of their WEEE free of charge for treatment and recycling."
Pardon? Are we now expected to transport our own WEEE to the centres? Will the Valpak scheme provide transportation containers for our WEEE? Will local authorities offer to collect our WEEE on a weekly basis as a social service? And how will we store it in the meantime? In our normal recycling crates? Or will we get a box especially for WEEE?
"As a consequence of our membership of the Valpak scheme, we will not accept returns of household WEEE itself and cannot accept WEEE returns for recycling"
Why? Are they concerned about being swamped in a tidal wave of WEEE? Far more WEEE than they can handle? Why is the burden always placed on the consumer to dispose of their own WEEE? Surely a little help from those making fat profits from the selling of WEEE is to be expected.
"...all WEEE that you volunteer for recycling will be specifically collected and treated by designated local waste facility centres and by licensed WEEE compliance centres."
What on earth is a WEEE compliance centre? Is this to ensure your WEEE is compliant? Or that your WEEE is disposed of in a compliant fashion? Or perhaps that your WEEE was originally produced in a compliant fashion? What if your WEEE wasn't produced in a compliant fashion? What if your WEEE contains more toxic substances than WEEE compliant centres can handle? Will your WEEE be refused? And if it's refused, how will you dispose of your WEEE if the WEEE compliant centres refuse it? Will you have to resort to fly-tipping? Disposing of your WEEE on street corners? Parks? Local hypermarket car parks? A neighbour's garden?
I suspect that in the end, a whole underground network will evolve as enterprising 'entrepreneurs' (often translated in English as 'crooks'), seeing an opportunity for a fast buck, start advertising to dispose of any WEEE that the compliant centres won't handle. "For only £100, we will collect and dispose of your undisposable WEEE!" "Can't get rid of your WEEE? Refused by all the major centres? Call free on 0800 123 1234 for a free quotation. WE dispose of WEEE no-one else will touch! Call today!"
Of course it will all end up in a giant super tanker en route to China, possibly with a vain hope that it will be hi-jacked by pirates, but nonetheless destined to be dumped in the Yangtse!
In the end, this whole directive was the product of a drunken night in some Brussels bar; cooked up by a bunch of English ex-public schoolboys, confident that their Belgian, French and German counterparts would never get the joke!
They were right!
So, thanks guys!
Okay.
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