UK meeting WEEE Directive target, figures suggest

The collection data for the first three months of the new producer responsibility system for WEEE – which started July 1, 2007 – shows old household appliances being collected at the rate of about 6.25 kg of WEEE per capita per year.

This would comfortably meet the 4kg per capita per year target set by the WEEE Directive for household WEEE.

The data is provisional, with three small producer compliance schemes given warnings because they have not managed to submit their data yet. These schemes were given until Tuesday to send in their figures, or the Agency will start enforcement proceedings. It is understood that two have now complied.

The Agency pointed out that being three-month statistics, other seasons of the year could produce different results.

Nevertheless, a spokesman for the Agency said: “It's good to see that we appear to be meeting our targets – especially on the consumer side, as there hasn't been as big a push on consumers yet. Once everything beds in, there will be more information going out to consumers – and then collection will go up even more.”

The Agency said it will issue updated information once the data is complete.

Collection

In total, the figures show that 115,826.06 tonnes of WEEE was collected between July to September 2007, from the 1,543 designated collection facilities under the supervision of the 37 producer compliance schemes.

This included 81,724.87 tonnes of household WEEE deposited at a DCF, 12,989.23 tonnes collected by retailers, and 21,111.96 tonnes of business WEEE.

Tony Pedrotti, director of sustainable development at BERR, said on Wednesday that: “We have done quite well – as required by the Directive we have an 'adequate network', and we have indicative figures that we are already meeting the targets set for us by the European Union. This is very encouraging indeed – we weren't expecting that so soon.”

Mr Pedrotti confirmed that 2008 would see the WEEE recycling message promoted further among consumers, to give them more information on what to do with their old electronic equipment.

Producers

Speaking at the same event, the Environment Agency's policy advisor for producer responsibility, Adrian Harding, said that the Agency would soon begin targeting those producers that have not signed up to contribute towards WEEE collection and recycling, for possible enforcement proceedings.

With more than 4,000 producers registered under the WEEE Regulations, he said the Agency's policy of education rather than prosecution in the first compliance period had produced results.

He explained: “In the first round of our telephone campaign we tried to contact 4,000 businesses, managed to contact 2,000 businesses and about 40% agreed they were probably producers and should register. More asked for information, which we sent to them, and only a small proportion said no, they were definitely not producers.”

With producers being brought to the Agency's attention by their competitors, Mr Harding was confident of rounding up those not complying with their legal duties under the Regulations.

However, he warned: “The clock is ticking – and it is about to stop ticking. Where we have been regulating with a light touch will soon be regulating with a big stick.”

Figures

The collection figures issued by the Agency were as follows:

n.b: Table updated 10/12/07, amending “Total WEEE Collected” column from version originally issued by the Environment Agency on 7/12/07.