DTI confirms 2006 start for WEEE producer responsibility

The DTI has confirmed a revision of the Clearing House proposal for organising responsibility for waste electronics, and has accepted that compliance schemes will have an important role within the WEEE system.

In a letter to key stakeholders, Chris Tollady of the DTI said the European WEEE Directive would be transposed into UK law in summer 2005, with non-statutory guidance accompanying it.

From January 2006, the Directive's producer responsibility obligations for household and non-household waste electronics will come into effect, as well as take-back obligations for retailers and distributors.

The DTI said it had encountered “major practical difficulties” in meeting the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive's original legal deadline of August 13, 2005. Other EU countries – including Germany – are also likely to bring in producer responsibility in 2006.

The Directive was supposed to see producer responsibility introduced in European states by August 13, 2005. The only thing that will happen in the UK on 13 August 2005 as far as WEEE is concerned is that the DTI proposes to implement the requirement to mark equipment to show it was put on the market after this August date.

Obligations
The proposal on a Clearing House or other system to organise WEEE obligations is still to be refined, the DTI said. It is expected that the DTI will arrange allocation of WEEE to producers. Mr Tollady explained: “The allocation approach will mix physical allocation (WEEE collection sites) to larger producers and compliance schemes with a settlement mechanism enabling financial compliance by producers with smaller market share-based obligations.”

Treatment
Mr Tollady said the government intends to consult “shortly” on draft regulations for the permitting of WEEE treatment facilities, pledging that the DTI “will make these regulations in time to permit facilities to treat separately collected WEEE once producer responsibility is implemented”.

The DTI accepted that deferring the start of WEEE regulations could cause difficulties for local authorities in dealing with July's Waste Acceptance Criteria, which adjusts the categorisation of hazardous wastes. Mr Tollady said the DTI, Defra and environment agencies will work with councils to provide guidance on this issue.

The Environment Agency will be responsible for registering producers who put electrical and electronic equipment onto the UK market.

Households and business
Producers will have to report data showing the weight and number of units they put onto the market during January to December 2004. On the question of how much of this material goes to households or to businesses, the DTI proposes a fairly sketchy methodology. Producers will only have to make “reasonable estimates, capable of corroboration” and this will then be used for the purposes of calculating their obligations relating to household WEEE.

Registration
The DTI confirms that producers will be able to register individually with the Agency and DTI although the alternative will be signing up with a compliance scheme which can handle registration on behalf of the producer.

CA sites
The DTI says that talks are expected to be concluded in April 2005 with the British Retail Consortium on funding of a retail compliance scheme, including support for upgrades to civic amenity site facilities for the separate collection of WEEE.

But, a note of uncertainty stills surrounds how this might work and the consultation paper suggests that there may be a question over the commitment to a retail compliance scheme. Because of this it is to give retailers and end of May 2005 deadline to come up with details of how it would work which would then be subject to formal approval by government.

A decision on how the Directive’s take-back obligations will be imposed will not be made until the issue of the BRC scheme is resolved.

Reuse
The paper says that the government is keen to meet reuse objectives and to safeguard the position of charities and the third sector. A taskforce is to look at the issues involved.