Valpak, the organisation that is to run the UK's only retail compliance scheme (RCS) for WEEE, has said it will guarantee legal compliance with the European WEEE Directive for retail members.
”Valpak will guarantee legal compliance with the Directive for retailers that join the scheme. “
– Mike Sadler, Valpak
Retailers are being asked to sign up to three-year contracts with the RCS, which will then provide funding for a network of collection points for household WEEE.
Mike Sadler, head of WEEE compliance at Valpak, said yesterday that most of the costs for the anticipated 6.2 million upgrades to be made to local authority civic amenity sites would be funded by larger retailers.
He said independent electrical retailers would pay a membership fee of about 500, while retailers that aren't specialists in electronics but are obligated under the Directive would be charged a lower fee of about 100.
Guarantee
Mr Sadler said: “Valpak will guarantee legal compliance with the Directive for retailers that join the scheme. Valpak's role is administering the fund – which has already been agreed – for upgrading collection sites.”
Additional fees may be required by the Environment Agency to enforce the WEEE regulations, which are expected to come into force in the UK in June 2006.
Take-back
If retailers don't join the compliance scheme, under the Directive they would have an obligation to provide like-for-like take back services for waste electronics in their stores.
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As well as presenting them with disposal and recycling costs, this situation could see retailers needing to register stores with the Environment Agency as they would be dealing with hazardous waste. And, stores could even be required to apply for waste management licenses.
Letsrecycle.com is holding a special conference on the way forward for waste electronics on October 12. For more details see the letsrecycle.com events page
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