Further delays likely for new waste electronics regulations

The option of a clearing house has been seen by many involved with WEEE as the best way to organise producer responsibility for waste electronics. But it seems that the further the DTI looks into the concept, the more problems appear.

” Unless there is a clear way forward by February 2005 there is likely to be a delay to the implementation of the legislation. “
– Claire Snow, ICER
One of the main areas being debated is the way to deal with the money the NCH would provide the Environment Agency to carry out monitoring and other regulatory activities. The NCH would collect fees from electronics producers, but there are questions as to how much of this should go to the Agency, and whether the Agency would use all of its WEEE income on the monitoring of the WEEE regulations.

Claire Snow, director of the Industry Council on Electronics Recycling, noted that implementation of the WEEE Directive is supposed to happen by August 13 2005. But she said: “Unless there is a clear way forward by February 2005 there is likely to be a delay to the implementation of the legislation. It will probably not be a very long delay, perhaps early in 2006.

“The government will still want to bring the legislation in as soon as possible but to bring in something of that stature in November or December would be chaos so it would be best to wait until the New Year,” she added.

Commenting on the friction surrounding the Agency's fees, Ms Snow said: “There is no legal structure that allows money to be kept just for the WEEE Directive, so the money will go into the EA funds. There is no way of hypothesising how much of what the EA receives is actually used in the monitoring process.”

Profit
There are also concerns over who is to operate the clearing house. Ms Snow said that whichever company wins the tender to run the NCH, it will want to build in some kind of profit. But she said: “The question is how will this be done?”

” We believe that we will meet the August 13 deadline and we would certainly hope to be ready in time.“
– Department of Trade and Industry
One DTI source said that there is likely to be a delay of a few months before the Department issues final details as to how the legislation is to be implemented. Originally the Department hoped it could unveil its legislative framework before Christmas or in January, but this now seems very unlikely.

The official view of the Department came today from a spokeswoman, who said: “We believe that we will meet the August 13 deadline and we would certainly hope to be ready in time.”

Among those involved with WEEE in the UK, there were a number of views. One expert told letsrecycle.com that there was a need to get the situation sorted “as quickly as possible.”

Critical
However, others were generally of the view that it was critical to get the NCH right or there was even the potential for chaos in implementation of the WEEE Directive.

Phil Conran, recycling development manager at Biffa Waste Services, part of the Transform WEEE service provider, said he believed a delay in the legislation would be “no bad thing”. He said: “We would support any delay, as we would rather things were done right than rushed through and mistakes made. But there needs to be a timetable that is understood by everybody.”

Ms Snow also added: “This is the first time that this has been done, so nobody really knows what to expect. The next time around a Clearing House will be a lot easier.”