Waste Management: WEEE Directive

My honourable friend the Minister of State for Science and Innovation (Malcolm Wicks) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement. Today the Government have published new regulations transposing the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directives 2002/96/EC and 2003/108/EC in the UK—the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations 2006. Electronic and electrical equipment is the fastest growing waste stream in Europe. The UK alone produced over 2 million tonnes in 2005. The directive has the laudable aim of reducing the amount of WEEE sent to landfill by promoting its separate collection, treatment and recycling. From 1 July 2007, the WEEE regulations will make all producers, importers, and those selling EEE under their own brand, in the UK market, responsible for financing its treatment, recovery and environmentally sound disposal. The regulations published today have been the subject of extensive public consultation to ensure all interested parties have been able to present their views and concerns as the regulations were developed. The regulations will: Achieve the environmental aims of the WEEE directive while continuing to support the important and dynamic electrical and electronic sectors. Provide effective and robust protection of the environment and a positive contribution to sustainable development from the increasing volumes of electrical and electronic equipment used in the UK. Allow existing relationships currently managing WEEE to continue. This is consistent with the Government's overall approach to regulation, which is to be as ““light-touch”” as possible and to minimise red tape burdens. Give distributors the choice of discharging their obligations by either joining the distributor take-back scheme (DTS) or by offering customers in-store take-back. Enable any operator of a designated collection facility (DCF) to arrange with a producer compliance scheme (PCS) to have the WEEE deposited at their site taken away for treatment and recycling by that PCS, free of charge. If relationships cannot be developed the operator of the DCF can arrange the treatment and recycling themselves and their costs can be reimbursed via an exchange and settlement process. Support the reuse of whole equipment after it has been discarded by the consumer or business end-user. It provides encouragement to the further reuse of whole equipment by requiring producer compliance schemes to work with the reuse sector to prioritise the reuse of whole equipment where this is possible. Allow the collection-on-delivery of old equipment for new equipment undertaken by retailers, and some producers, to continue in the UK in the future. Collection-on-delivery is valued by consumers for the convenience it brings in enabling them to discard old equipment. The WEEE regulations also allows WEEE collected by local authorities as part of their ““bulky waste collections”” to continue in the future, as well as WEEE collected by the voluntary and charitable sector. Enable consumers to dispose of their WEEE free of charge at accessible and appropriate places. People who dispose of their WEEE in this way will know that they will be contributing to protection of the environment, reductions in greenhouse gases and higher levels of sustainable development in the UK and in the world more widely. As part of the last public consultation, I set out our desire to introduce partial producer responsibility from 1 April 2007 to ensure that producers were obligated to cover the costs of collection, treatment and recycling of EEE containing hazardous substances (for example CRTs, refrigerants and gas discharge lamps). The Government are planning to adopt this approach and I will be making an announcement shortly about the mechanism for doing so.