WEEE and local authorities

The WEEE Regulations are actually very well written and will operate properly if each party follows the rules.

Many obligated companies would prefer lower cost as pointed out in the recent article by Hewlett Packard. However the report on which this article was based is deeply flawed as it seeks to transfer the cost from the producer of electrical goods onto the recycling industry.

The regulations were brought into force because before that time it was the local authority who paid the price of recycling waste electrical equipment. Some of this equipment attracted a charge whilst others provided income or a rebate. In the early days the producers hoped that the Regulations would ensure that they would benefit from the scrap-rebate so as to offset their cost of compliance.

Contracts

The problem with this was that the local authorities awarded their contracts for their civic amenity sites on the basis that the waste operator would get the scrap value of the recycling. This meant that they were incentivised to recycle more and landfill less which was good for everyone.

In the early days Electrolink fought for the local authorities and their contractors and in 2009 the High Court ruled in favour of the Government. Subsequent guidance issued by the Environment Agency allowed under collecting schemes to over-obligate themselves by recruiting more obligation than they could service themselves and over collecting schemes were allowed to over collect provided that both parties agreed commercial terms.

This means that local authorities are able to invite more schemes to tender for their DCF sites so that they get the best service and are not restricted to one scheme, and allowing them to retain their scrap revenues, if schemes offer this.

However, local authorities need to ensure that compliance schemes tendering for their DCF contracts have these commercial contracts in place and that everyone obeys the regulations.

Unaware

Some local authorities, being unaware of how the Regulations work, may have chosen to award DCF contracts on the basis of financial enhancements. This problem was highlighted to BIS who were asked to clarify the Regulations in this regard, and they have now confirmed that it is contrary to the Regulations to offer, ask for or accept a payment for WEEE, as outlined in the code of practice.

A breach of the code of practice and therefore the regulations is an offence and every compliance scheme ought to make this clear to every local authority they tender with to ensure that the local authority does not place themselves in breach of the regulations. As many local authority officers will be aware, this is a very serious matter.

Regulations

The WEEE Regulations are very complex and it is no easy task to alter the methodology of them without causing greater problems elsewhere in the system. All that is needed is for everyone to ensure that we all work together in a fair and open way so that obligated companies pay what they are supposed to pay, and not more, Local Authorities are relieved of the burden of paying for recycling that others ought to finance and the recycling industry gets paid a reasonable sum for doing a very important job and doing it to the best environmental standard so that we do not damage the environment in which we all live.

The role of the compliance scheme is vital at every level of this regime. It is our job to assist everyone so that we are all in compliance with the rules. So lets not try to mend something that is not broken but rather understand the rules and comply with them so that the system works as it was intended to.