Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Ireland recycled record e-scrap volumes in 2025, with the company collecting 12% more devices than the year prior, according to its most recent annual environmental report.
The company recycled 21.1 million devices last year, the equivalent of 39,000 metric tons. That’s up from 18.8 million devices in 2024 and includes 18.5 million small appliances, 1.9 million lighting products and 123,060 fridge-freezers. WEEE recovered 82% of the materials from those items for reuse in manufacturing.
The company reported progress in several sectors. WEEE collected 1,284 metric tons of discarded portable batteries, and has doubled its lithium-ion battery collection over the past five years to 114 metric tons. It also collected more than 1.4 million vape devices, a 24% year-over-year increase, and more than 70 metric tons of these devices since launching a vape takeback program in 2023.
However, company leadership said WEEE still fell short of the European Union’s 65% collection target. CEO Leo Donovan claims the EU’s methodology, which measures e-scrap collection against the volume of new goods on the market over the previous three years, is outdated.
“Ireland is recycling more electrical waste than ever before, and consumers are making a real effort to do the right thing,” he said. “But Europe’s current measurement system was designed for a very different market. Current collection rate targets do not adequately reflect modern consumption patterns, long product life spans or emerging technologies such as solar PV systems and heat pumps. These products may not enter the recycling stream for decades, yet they are already included in today’s sales-based targets.”
The EU’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive calls for targeted public awareness campaigns and expanded collection points to bolster collection rates. Donovan said his company has done so, but shifting toward recovery quality as much as quantity will better serve the directive’s main intent.
“The focus now has to move beyond simply collecting waste to ensuring valuable materials including lithium, copper, cobalt and aluminum are recovered to standards and kept within the circular economy.”
He said that aligns with the company’s strategy of becoming the leading extended producer responsibility (EPR) solution for the electronics and battery industries. The European Commission began re-evaluating the WEEE Directive last summer. It found that while progress has been made since it became law two decades ago, only about 40% of all e-scrap has been recovered across the EU, with only three nations (Bulgaria, Latvia and Slovakia) meeting the 65% goal. Lack of infrastructure and varying calculation methods were among the reasons cited for low collection rates.
The company employs 16 people and has recycled 250 million devices since opening in 2005.
