Biffa, whose Transform scheme has around 200 producer members for the current compliance period, today told letsrecycle.com that it is in discussions with the EA in relation to its status for next year.
Meanwhile, Econo-Weee yesterday sent an e-mail sent to its 400-plus producer members yesterday (October 5), outlining the reason it says it was given by the Environment Agency for rejecting its re-approval application and confirming that it was considering appealing the decision.
It also explained that, if its attempt to submit an appeal as soon as possible is blocked by the Environment Agency or Defra then it would look to lodge a court injunction suspending the Agency's decision, and claimed that it had notified the EA on Friday (October 2) that it would be taking this action.
While the EA did not give a detailed reason for rejecting Econo-Weee's re-approval application when it announced the list of approved schemes for 2010 last week (see letsrecycle.com story), the scheme claims that it has been told the refusal relates to a shortfall of 700 tonnes in its operational plan for 2010 between the amount of WEEE it expected to have access to and the obligation of its producer members.
Earlier this year, after the REPIC judicial review ruling, the Agency stressed to schemes that they should not include “significant deliberately planned shortfall or excesses of WEEE” in their operational plans for future compliance periods, without having formal contracts in place with other schemes to access the WEEE (see letsrecycle.com story).
But, in the email to its members, Econo-Weee explained that: “We submitted our operational plan and viable plan with a 700t shortage, but considered this to be an insignificant amount – indeed, it represents only 0.17% of the total amount of WEEE collected across the UK last year.”
The scheme claimed that, as the 700 tonnes was the obligation of a single member of its scheme, it had told the Agency that, “as a last resort”, it would terminate that member's membership at the end of 2009, removing the deficit.
It added: “For some reason, the Environment Agency chose not to give us the opportunity to take this course of action and, completely out of the blue, we had a call on the afternoon of Thursday, 1st October, notifying us that our application had been refused.”
And, the scheme claimed that it was then told by an EA officer that, even if it removed the member from its scheme that day, its application would still be refused, and it would have to seek an appeal.
Injunction
Speaking to letsrecycle.com about the situation, Econo-Weee's co-director, John Kerr, claimed that “we will take this to the highest level”, noting that an appeal was “the option we're pursuing first but if Defra says they won't hear it or the EA won't support it then we have got no option but to seek an injunction.”
Mr Kerr explained that, if it was allowed to pursue an appeal, he believed “it could be resolved very quickly”.
Under the WEEE regulations, obligated producers have until next Thursday, October 15, to sign up to a scheme for the 2010 compliance period, and schemes must register their members with the Agencies by October 31.
In the e-mail to its members, Econo-Weee revealed that it had made arrangements with another WEEE scheme whereby they could sign up to that scheme “as a contingency measure” and could then return to Econo-Weee if and when any injunction or appeal was successful.
But, Mr Kerr stressed that, with the deadlines looming, “the bottom line is all our members could leave”.
It is understood that the Environment Agency has now written to all the producer members of the schemes which failed to win approval last week, advising them of their scheme's non-approval and emphasising that they must join an approved scheme for the 2010 period to meet their regulatory requirements.
Under regulation 66 of the WEEE regulations, any appeal against an Environment Agency decision must be made to the secretary of state, who may then appoint “any person” to determine the appeal.
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