WEEE guidance allays de minimis concerns

WEEE compliance schemes have been offered further clarity over how small electronics producers will be expected to meet their recycling obligations in 2014.

This follows the release of correspondence from the government, released without the prior knowledge of schemes, instructing producers placing less than five tonnes of electronic goods to defer registering for compliance for 2014, ahead of the November 15 registration deadline.

The move was intended to pave the way for the introduction of a de minimis threshold which exempts small producers from the recycling obligations, brought in as part of the governments shake up of the WEEE system, which schemes said had caused confusion among producers over the 2014 compliance period.

This week, the Environment Agency has published a temporary position statement, which confirms that small producers will be given the option to register directly with the Environment Agency for 2014 by January 31, as set out by the government, or to sign up with a compliance scheme by the November 15 deadline.

Producers that opt to register with a scheme will be required to finance the collection, treatment and recovery of WEEE proportionate to the quantity of new products they place onto the market, while producers registering directly with the Agency will be required to pay an annual fee of 30.

Options

Meanwhile, the statement also adds that where producers have already entered into contracts with compliance schemes the Agency has no power to cancel or refund registration fees if a compliance scheme wishes to pursue an alternative registration option.

The clarification from the Agency comes as a relief to producer compliance schemes, who had called for urgent guidance in the wake of the original correspondence from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in Spetember (see letsrecycle.com story).

Matthew Manning, key account specialist at compliance scheme Budget Pack, said: The recent position statement from the Environment Agency has confirmed many of the points that were raised by the initial indication of a de minimis threshold back in September. Given the late implication of this threshold, we welcome the option for producers who are affected by the change to register via their Compliance Scheme.

This ensures continuity and accuracy of data submissions whilst not impacting on businesses having to navigate the direct registration process for themselves. We have first-hand experience of the direct registration platform for battery small producers, which is a time consuming process and is likely to be the same platform for WEEE.

The vast majority of our members who are less than five tonnes have expressed their intention for Budget Pack to manage their registration and we will be working with them over the coming weeks to make certain a smooth transition into 2014.