Among them is a proposal by the Joint Trade Associations, which includes compliance schemes ERP, Recolight and Repic, whose proposal was adopted by BIS to set the WEEE compliance fee for 2014. The group claims that its membership represents 90% of the WEEE producer obligation in the UK.
Other proposals have included a submission from Valpak and a joint proposal from Advantage Waste Brokers, Dataserv Group, DHL WEEE Compliance, Veolia WEEE Compliance, Electrolink, WeeeCare and WE3 Compliance.
As yet, JTA is the only group to publish details of its submissions.
JTA’s 2014 mechanism resulted in around £375,000 having been collected from compliance schemes who failed to meet their recycling obligations. The money is due to be distributed to local authority WEEE projects
BIS can choose to use the compliance as part of the revised WEEE regulations, which came into effect from January 2014.
The regulations establish a system of household WEEE collection targets for producer compliance schemes. Should a scheme fail to meet its collection targets, it can pay a ‘compliance fee’ to meet the cost of its members’ obligations.
The fee is determined after the end of each compliance year, and schemes will not learn how much they will be required to pay through the fee until after every scheme has submitted its final evidence.
Sliding scale
The proposal submitted by the JTA, involves a sliding scale that sees schemes pay more in fees the further they are from their target. This is calculated by taking into account the average cost of transport and treatment for each stream.
JTA claims that the new mechanism, which was originally developed alongside accountancy firm Mazars, will be largely similar to that used for 2014, but the group says it has been ‘enhanced’ for 2015. As yet no details of the changes have been made public.
Commenting on the announcement, chairman of the JTA and technical manager at the Association of Manufacturers of Domestic Appliances, Richard Hughes said: “The compliance fee is a vital element of the UK’s WEEE system. It ensures that where a PCS has not fully met its target through collections during the compliance period, it has a legitimate alternative route to compliance. This has helped to deliver an estimated £18 million of savings from the UK WEEE System, supporting the government’s agenda to cut business red tape.”
Proposals
A total of three proposed methodologies for the 2014 compliance period were originally considered, including proposals put forward by the Environment Exchange (t2e) and a joint proposal by Dataserv, DHL, Transform, Valpak and Veolia.
Following a consultation on the proposals, BIS will announce its decision as to which methodology will apply from around February 2016. Any schemes which fall short of their collection targets in 2015 will be liable to pay the fee in accordance with the chosen method from that date.
[Updated 17:10 01/10/2015 to include details of all submissions]
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