The fee is an alternative mechanism that compliance schemes and obligated business can use if they have insufficient recycling evidence and BIS confirmed its use again last week (see letsrecycle.com story).
The JTA represents about 90% of the companies obligated under the WEEE (waste electrical and electronics equipment) producer obligation in the UK and has a trio of compliance schemes involved in its work. Its trade association members are: AMDEA, BEAMA, BTHA, EEF, GAMBICA, LIA, PETMA, SEAMA and techUK.
Fairer
It is the second time that the Joint Trade Association (JTA) proposal has been selected by BIS and the department’s decision has “delighted” the JTA. TechUK heralded the BIS decision as supporting “a fairer WEEE system in the UK”.
However, submission of three proposals to BIS has seen compliance schemes involved in the recycling of WEEE – waste electrical and electronic equipment – split over the choice of the compliance fee system.
Three producer compliance schemes ERP UK, Recolight and Repic contributed to the work of the JTA which won the bid.
“We are delighted by this news. The JTA has worked very hard to ensure that our proposal was robust, workable, and economically sound.”
Richard Hughes
Technical Manager, AMDEA
JTA’s success means defeat for a Valpak proposal and another proposal in the form of a joint ‘seven scheme’ plan from Advantage Waste Brokers, Dataserv Group, DHL WEEE Compliance, Veolia WEEE Compliance, Electrolink, WeeeCare and WE3 Compliance.
‘Delighted’
Celebrating its successful fee bid, which will be used to settle the calendar year 2015 obligations, JTA chairman Richard Hughes, technical manager at the AMDEA association said: “We are delighted by this news. The JTA has worked very hard to ensure that our proposal was robust, workable, and economically sound. To help us achieve this we used two fully independent professional economic consultancy groups.
“FTI consulting developed the formula upon which the calculation method is based and Frontier Economics then reviewed the fee calculation methodology and added some further enhancements in the light of the previous year’s experience.”
AMDEA (the Association of Manufacturers of Domestic Applicances) members include many producers of goods which come under the WEEE directive including products from Beko, Bosch, Electrolux, Dyson, Hoover Candy, LG and Samsung.
‘Top ten’
Users of the fee system can be “confident “that their applications will be handled efficiently because the JTA has again chosen Mazars “one of the UK’s top ten accountancy firms, as the fee administrator,” claimed Susanne Baker, head of environment & compliance at TechUK. TechUK has more than 850 member companies and these include firms such as Vodafone, BAE, Barclays Bank and Samsung.
In 2014, according to AMDEA, the compliance fee regime for the year “generated £375,000” which was added to the sums brought in by the Distributor Take-Back Scheme. Local authorities were invited to bid for a share of this money to fund their local reuse and recycling schemes.
Details of costs of the scheme and fee rates have not been disclosed and only last week the Information Commissioner Offices for England and Scotland said they were not going to require details of the fees to be released.
FoI requests
Freedom of information requests had been submitted by Phil Conran, a director of consultancy 360 Environmental. He said that the original FoIs made by him requested the compliance fee tonnage issued for 2014 by each of the five main categories of WEEE or an aggregated tonnage. He emphasised: “I did not ask for price information.”
Mr Conran added: “Despite the lengthy content of the notices, in neither is there an actual explanation of how the disclosure of the data might harm the commercial interests of any PCSs and this is the real frustration… It leaves a deep sense of frustration that in an age of supposed openness and transparency, the market – and producers that have to play in it – are denied what to me is an essential piece of the jigsaw.”
Situation normal, no change in the decision making process there then. As for the FOI hardly a security risk !!!
You could say there is nothing to stop Valpak and the seven scheme group publishing their bids though