Feanor

So you confirm that the only regular thing is the fact that european regulations are regularly ignored across the whole Europe. Which is both sad and relieving.

And it is not ok because I have to do four trips instead of two, two coming and going to the shop and two coming and going to the city disposal. That means waste of my own time and money.

Who is going to take the car and drive to deliver a cell phone to the city dump instead of simply throwing it in the garbage or anywhere? Or a router? Or anything that fits in a bag.

I would also like to know what controls are in place to check how the stuff that gets "retired" by disposal areas is actually recycled. That like you said includes storage, transport, disassembling, separation of pieces, different recycling procedures (some of which are toxic), etc.

Anyway in Italy there is a law that obliges shops to retire the used devices. But like I said, almost none do.

The european directive is the usual bullshit conceived by people who don't have any idea of how things work in real world. And I guess the national laws are made just for the need to comply the european directive but with the implicit agreement that they won't be enforced.

I guess the "how often" is the same as buying, that is why the current regulations are in terms of "give in one, get one". Or if you like, in terms of recycled tons over sold tons.

I am sure Austrians are better at it than Italians.
That is the point. If you make a regulation that makes it difficult for people to deliver used stuff for recycling and you do that in an environment where people aren't much concerned of it, you are SURE it is not going to work.

I will summarize:
Italian law says electronic shops must retire used stuff in the same time they sell new stuff. Like they should retire your old laptop when you buy a new one. Like I said, there is a law but it is like it doesn't exist because I never found a shop that did it.

Here in North Italy every town has got a disposal area, usually located at the outskirts of the town, probably for safety reasons and then you must go there on purpose. There are different regulations for each place but usually only residents are allowed to deliver stuff there then business deliver has got a different regulation.

So here come some issues. First of all you can go shopping in a different town than your own, then you need two different days, one for shopping and one for disposal. Then you can go only on saturdays, when they are opened only in the morning because the disposal has the same opening schedule as work days. Then there are regulations that put a limit over the number of devices you can deliver per year.

Another side issue is since residents and business have two different regulations, those "do by yourself" people or even those who do it as side job (not declared to the tax office) aren't allowed to deliver stuff.

There are small offices and residentes that don't pay the city tax for garbage disposal, for some reason or another so they don't want to go to the disposal because they are asked to register and get a chip card.

And you can bet people who go to the mall and buy a new smartphone are not going to go to the disposal to give the on one in. They just throw it in the first basket they see around (when they don't throw it in the common house garbage).

Then, here is North Italy where we somehow try to stay connected to Europe. Imagine what it is as you move down south. To mention a famous example, we are currently shipping (by ships) garbage collected from streets of Naples to Holland to get it disposed because they seem to not be able to dispose it by themselves. And when I say "garbage" I mean everything from refrigerators to meal leftovers.