Consumers to police WEEE obligations of small retailers

Under the legislation stemming from Europe's Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive, retailers will be responsible for their share of collecting old appliances for recycling.

” Catching small retailers that are free riding will be driven by those consumers who are aware of their rights to take back WEEE.“
– Daniel Kapadia, Defra
Retailers can either provide in-store take-back services when they sell a piece of electronic equipment or join the UK's retailer compliance scheme, run by Valpak on behalf of the British Retail Consortium, which will provide an adequate network for collecting WEEE on their behalf (see letsrecycle.com story).

However, concerns were raised at a BRC event in London yesterday that some smaller or non-specialist electrical retailers may not realise they are obligated under the WEEE regulations.

Addressing the issue, Defra's policy advisor for producer responsibility, Daniel Kapadia, said that these “free riders” would not be a major concern of the regulators unless they were brought to the attention of the Environment Agency.

Rights
“We are not going to be rushing after post offices that are selling a few torches,” he said. “Catching small retailers that are free riding will be driven by those consumers who are aware of their rights to take back WEEE. Those people will be able to report the retailer if they fail to take back the electrical waste or inform the consumer of a nearby collection point.”

Mr Kapadia said the Environment Agency will tackle those small retailers that are not part of the compliance scheme but send customers to local civic amenity sites with their WEEE. Retailers that are not part of the retail compliance scheme have to provide in-store take back in order to comply with the WEEE regulations.

He said the Agency would be able to check retailers claiming to be members of the retailers' compliance scheme against a list of the scheme's member companies.

There are expected to be around 9,000 small retailers that face obligations under the WEEE regulations since there is no threshold to allow the smallest businesses to avoid obligation of the kind seen in packaging responsibility. Although this will make up a small percentage of overall retailer obligations, possibly less than 1%.

Letsrecycle.com is holding a special conference on the way forward for waste electronics on October 12. At the conference ICER will be presenting the outcome of its domestic WEEE research. For more details see the letsrecycle.com events page