Many years ago, I moved to this town to start studies in Electrical Engineering. My parents weren’t the richest ones, so rather early I needed to get a student’s job to earn some money. I ended up with a company whose boss was a visioneer. Back then, he postualted that it makes more sense to REPAIR things, instead of throwing them away. And he wanted to develop a database which guides engineers step-by-step through schematics of machinery and electronics to repair. Mind you, it was IBM-PC with DOS 2.2 times back then!
Later, he learned that German and European politicians planned on passing legislative that actually manufacturers need to take old and broken equipment back so that it gets disassembled, recycled if possible, and properly disposed. This law – dubbed by him the “Elektronikschrottverordnung” – was “imminent any time now”. I stayed with the company for almost 4 years, and always the legislative was “imminent”, and he envisioned that he might be the forerunner offering recycling services as well.
His company is long out of business. In later years he at least managed to get some repair contracts for desktop laser printers. Still, the company did not survive. However, a few days ago I got a message from an old friend with questions regarding how to get a website indexed by search engines. What is so strange about this is that he has the domain www.elektrogesetz.de and tries to set up an information portal for end customers and businesses about the new law for – well – return/recycling of electronic goods. Finally, there IS a law – almost 20 years after I first heard about it being “imminent”. My old boss would have need a reaaaaly long breath…
Which company are you talking about? Sounds like IGS?