Councils unaware of WEEE scheme obligations

Around half of councils are unaware if their partner WEEE compliance scheme collects too much or too little WEEE to meet their members obligations, research has shown.

This is among the findings of a survey of 170 local authority waste disposal officers, carried out by the University of Central Lancashires (UCLan) Centre for Waste Management on behalf of producer compliance scheme Repic.

Critics of the current WEEE system argue that councils should have more information about how much WEEE compliance schemes are obligated to collect, in order to prevent schemes from trading evidence, which is said to drive up the evidence of recycling.

The results of the survey come ahead of the launch of the governments consultation on proposed changes to the WEEE system, expected shortly, which is being brought in to reduce the cost of compliance for producers of electronic equipment, and to enact the requirements of the recast WEEE Directive.

In total 51% of the respondents questioned as part of the survey, said they had no knowledge of whether the amount of WEEE collected met the obligated targets of their producer members.

Among the other findings from the survey, more than 70% of the council officers questioned said they thought they could benefit from a better understanding of the WEEE Directive.

Dr Philip Morton, chief executive of Repic, said: In light of the recast, which has the potential to radically transform the UK WEEE system, we funded the survey to gauge the perceptions of local authorities across the country about the current WEEE system. It is clearly important that effort is made to help local authorities get a better grasp on the changes and what they mean to them.

Over 50% of waste disposal authorities indicated that WEEE was a high priority for them and 73% of them felt that they would benefit from being updated on the new legislation. Repic will be running workshops for local authorities in the next few months and information on these will be available on our website.

Recycling officers also commented that greater focus was needed on educating the public on WEEE recycling, with lack of householder knowledge said to be the primary barrier to increasing WEEE recycling rates.

The research also showed that only a small minority of recycling officers questioned said that they currently use or are considering using kerbside collections of WEEE in the future.

Karl Williams, director at the UCLans Centre for Waste Management, said: From the waste disposal authoritys perspective WEEE was not a prominent stream, however, it was encouraging that from the survey the waste disposal authority officers gave WEEE a higher priority in both its collection and treatment.

The Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) has already revealed three of the options that are likely to be included in its consultation, which is due to be launched shortly, including targeting evidence trading between schemes (see letsrecycle.com story).