The original WEEE Directive introduced the principle of ‘producer responsibility’ to electrical and electronic goods to ensure that consumers buying these products would pay for their ultimate environmentally sound disposal (via the price of the product), rather than this cost being met by society at large. So the Directive obliged Member States to require the setting up of collection schemes for consumers to return their old electrical goods free of charge.

It was always the intention to review the Directive in the light of subsequent experience, and in 2008 a draft ‘recast’ was proposed.  One of the recognised challenges was the growing volume of small electronic equipment which was more likely to be disposed of by consumers in their household rubbish collections rather than being taken to collection facilities.

Taking a lead from the Batteries Directive, it has been suggested that retailers of electrical and electronic equipment should be obliged to take back items of small WEEE from members of the public, even if they are not making any new purchases at that time. At the moment, aUKelectrical retailer must offer their household customers a free disposal system and there are three ways to do this.  The retailer may offer in-store take-back for customers buying a replacement product on a like for like basis; or they may join the national distributor take-back scheme; or they may offer an alternative as long as it is free and easily accessible for their customers.  They may also charge for the collection of WEEE from a consumer’s home and then take responsibility for transferring that WEEE to a suitable treatment facility.

Another proposal is for binding targets for the number of products ‘prepared for re-use’ (products that are refurbished and re-sold, rather than being dismantled). This is in line with the environmental mantra of ‘reduce, re-use and recycle’ but does not seem to take account of the huge energy efficiency improvements to domestic appliances over the last decade or so.  And it could be argued that this would interfere with the free market.

Naturally the proposed revisions include more challenging targets and even the way the targets are calculated is under discussion. This is partly driven by concerns about illegal exports.

However, discussions are still in progress so we do not yet know what will make it to the final version.

The process of law making inEuropeoften seems very slow as the EU Parliament and Council analyse the Commission’s initial proposal, followed by a sudden rush once agreement between the three parties seems close. The three parties are the Commission, which is the EU civil service; the Council (ministries from the 27 Member States) and the directly elected European Parliament. 

Next steps

Once the recast Directive is finally agreed it will need to be transposed into national legislation, a process that normally takes 18 months. The enforcement for this legislation is then aMemberStateresponsibility.

In the UK, the Environment Agency and its equivalents in the devolved administrations enforce the legislation as it pertains to manufacturers, while the Vehicle Certification Agency covers retailers.  It has a range of helpful information on its website: www.dft.gov.uk/vca/enforcement/weee-enforcement.asp.

Implications

While it is clear that the intention of the revised legislation is to ensure that manufacturers should pay for the full cost of WEEE collection and treatment, a key issue for retailers is the proposals for ensuring the collection of small WEEE.  The Scottish Government has recently issued proposals for meeting its Zero Waste strategy which includes a possible requirement for retailers to take back small WEEE from anyone, not only their customers. 

The requirements of the Batteries Directive have led to many retailers taking back more batteries than they sell so it is not inconceivable that collection of, for example, sim cards could follow the same route.  However, retailers would not want to install multiple collection points for WEEE that they had not even sold, but that they would have to ensure it was correctly processed.

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