LONDON, UK.- The RSA Weee Man – an environmental awareness initiative from the RSA and Canon Europe Electronic waste giant was unveiled at South Bank, London. The RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) and Canon Europe, the leading imaging and information technology solution provider, have collaborated on the RSA WEEE Man – an environmental awareness initiative to highlight the growing problem of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) in the UK and across Europe.

The RSA WEEE Man, which is unveiled at London’s City Hall on the South Bank, is an imposing seven metre high, human figure composed of three tonnes of WEEE. This represents the total amount of electronic waste that an average person in the UK is likely to consume in their lifetime. The WEEE Man will be displayed outside City Hall for 28 days until 27 May and then at the Eden Project, Cornwall for the summer.

Rob Holdway, Project Director of the RSA WEEE Man, said: “The RSA WEEE Man is a stark illustration of the amount of waste we are currently consuming. Composed entirely of the sort of WEEE we use and discard, its teeth have been made from computer mice, the spine is formed from an old washing machine and the neck is composed of vacuum cleaner tubes.

“An average householder in the UK now owns 25 electrical and electronic appliances. This means that as a country, we own more than 15 billion of these goods. Householders and businesses in the UK throw away at least one million tonnes of WEEE every year and 90% of this ends up as landfill.”

“The RSA and Canon Europe have created the WEEE Man in order to transform the public’s perception of electronic waste as ‘out of sight, out of mind’. The UK is running out of landfill sites. Both the public and business need to realise the huge environmental damage our current consumption of WEEE causes. ”

“We want the RSA WEEE Man to prompt a fundamental shift in the way we think about WEEE production and disposal so that designers, manufacturers and consumers start to take their environmental responsibility to heart.”

James Leipnik, Chief of Communication and Corporate Relations, Canon Europe, said: “Through the RSA WEEE Man initiative Canon wants to encourage communities to work together to resolve environmental issues and to develop solutions that will allow consumers to have easy access to WEEE disposal facilities. Educational and awareness programmes such as this will hopefully make WEEE disposal as widely accepted as recycling for newspapers, glass bottles and aluminium cans.”

Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said: “This unique sculpture works so well because it provokes us to realise how much electrical and electronic waste we all create. We do not have endless resources and we cannot keep sending our rubbish to landfill. When the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Directive comes into force next year, more services will be available for Londoners to recycle their electrical and electronic waste.”

WEEE is the fastest growing waste stream in the European Union and represents a contribution of 14kg per European citizen or 6.5 million tonnes a year. The amount of WEEE in the EU is growing at up to 8% per year and the content of hazardous components in Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) is of major concern.The European Union, through its WEEE Directive, which was due to be incorporated into UK law in August 2005, is an attempt to combat the huge challenge that WEEE has become throughout Europe and a direct attempt to implement an effective system of waste management. In the UK, the legislation for implementation of the EU WEEE Directive has been deferred until January 2006.