Nigel Smith, CSR policy director at the BRC said it hasn't been possible to come up with a compliance scheme because of delays to the government WEEE consultations. “We need to define what we are supporting, what we will provide. I need to be able to go to my members and say you will pay this much each year,” he said
But he said that by the end of November the BRC will know more about the new regulations and by February 2005 at the latest a retail compliance scheme should be in place.
As part of the compliance scheme the retailers will be providing some funding, the government proposes between 5 and 10 million, to local authorities for the upgrades needed to CA sites, expected to be used as take back sites for WEEE.
The BRC believe these costs should be fairly minimal, Mr Smith said: “For most CA sites to accept WEEE they need hard standing, signage and weather protection, we don't believe that the costs for changes need to escalate. The CA sites will not have to pay for these changes, and the producers pay for the collection, most authorities should see this as an opportunity.”
Running the scheme
One of the issues that the BRC has been looking into is who will run the compliance scheme. Mr Smith said the BRC could handle the organisation as long as it is kept simple, he explained: “We would hope to run a compliance scheme internally, it could be a simple system and we want to make it easy to join. We are in a position to run the scheme, 95% of the market are BRC members and we have been communicating regularly with them.”
But he said this is not the only option, he explains: “If through discussion's it becomes apparent that it would be difficult to run we would probably hand control to a third party. We have had about ten different companies looking at a compliance scheme, although we would still want to have a strong hand in proceedings.”
The two options at the moment for retailers to carry out their collection obligations appear to be the BRC's retail compliance scheme or a take back service. The Dixon group is trialling take back service in the Midlands and many believe this may be the way forward for larger outlet stores, but for smaller companies with little room to deal with like-for-like take back the compliance scheme is seen as the sensible option.
Subscribe for free