BIS official outlines possible WEEE changes

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is considering a number of options to radically overhaul the WEEE system, ahead of its formal consultation on the system in early 2013.

The departments assistant director of environmental legislation, David Styles, outlined several of the proposals at the Electrical and Electronic Equipment and the Environment 2012 Conference, hosted by technology consultancy ERA Technology in London today (November 15).

Changes are set to be made to the WEEE system in light of the recast of the WEEE directive which entered the European statute book this summer, and the government is also keen to overhaul the WEEE system under its Red Tape Challenge, set up to reduce the administrative burden on businesses.

Mr Styles told delegates: We have been doing a lot of informal consultation with schemes, producers, AATF operators and others and there will be a formal consultation in March. We will be putting forward a number of options that will change the system.

Options that have been drawn up so far by BIS include the establishment of a single national compliance scheme, similar to that in place in the Netherlands or Belgium which would be responsible for financing the collection and treatment of WEEE and distributing the costs of compliance nationwide. The scheme could be either privately run or overseen by the government.

Mr Styles said: We have 42 schemes in the UK and some people say that complicates trading at the end of the year. But, some people say that we need competition between schemes because that helps to boost collections rates.

Targets

Another proposal being looked at by BIS is to retain the existing compliance scheme structure, but for the collection targets to be set at the beginning of year, rather than at the end, with schemes allocated Designated Collection Facilities centrally.

An additional option the department is looking at would also involve multiple collection schemes, but would give them an option to pay a compliance fee if collection targets are not met. The fee would be paid into a fund which could then be used to pay for publicity campaigns or other means of boosting WEEE collections.

However, Mr Styles stressed that these proposals were among several being considered by the department, and that it would only favour an option that had overall support following the formal consultation in 2013.

He told delegates that BIS was aiming to put new legislation in place by January 1 2014, six weeks ahead of the February 14 deadline for the transposition of the Recast, in order to make it a smoother transition for Schemes.

Interim measures

Mr Styles also highlighted the short term measures which are being put in place to reduce the cost of compliance in the build up to the new legislation.

He added: Largely, the WEEE system got a clean bill of health [under the Red Tape Challenge], but it was recognised that producers were paying much higher than the true cost of processing WEEE to be compliant. Trading of evidence, it is claimed, increases the cost to producers, and we have got to tackle that.

The measures are intended to give users of the WEEE system greater transparency, including an annual statement, to be published by the Environment Agency, which will include a summary of enforcement actions taken against compliance schemes.

And, there will be greater transparency from compliance schemes, with each schemes collection and obligation data set to be made available to local authorities, who have previously been unable to gauge the extent to which schemes bidding for collection contracts were over or under collecting.

The conference also heard from Defras head of procurement Maya de Souza, who addressed delegates on the departments procurement strategy in line with the Greening Government commitment. Topics covered in her presentation included the Departments forward commitment procedure to buy sustainable products and identifying unnecessary wastage.