WEEE Regulations

Are you affected?
What must you do?
Summary – overview of system
Scope – what is EEE/WEEE
How the system works
Retailer responsibilities
Fees
Producer Compliance Schemes
Current situation
WEEE Contacts

Are you affected?

Does your business place electrical equipment onto the UK market - either for business use or for household use – through UK manufacture, import in to the UK or by selling equipment manufactured by someone else that is sold under your own brand? If ‘yes’ you are considered to be a ‘producer’.

Does your business sell electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) to consumers, either direct from shops or indirect through the internet or catalogues? If the answer is ‘yes’ you are considered to be a ‘distributor’ under the Regulations.

If the answer is ‘yes’ to EITHER of the two questions above then regardless of your turnover or the proportion of your sales made up by electrical equipment, you are affected. If the answer is ‘no’ to BOTH, you are not affected.

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What must you do?

If you are a seller of EEE, you have a choice. You can opt to offer in-store takeback of goods - in which case you must display signs in the shop or on your website to say that you do this - or you must register with the Distributor Takeback Scheme. This exempts you from in-store takeback, but you will be required to pay a fee for this exemption. Under either option, you must display notices in-store advising customers about environmental issues related to waste EEE (WEEE). Details.

If you place EEE onto the UK market, you are a producer and you must register. Unlike the Packaging Regulations, producers do not have the option of registering direct and must register with a scheme. Like Packaging, each compliance period is a calendar year, but there, the similarities end. For WEEE, producers have to register with a scheme by 15th October for the year ahead. Registration simply includes information relating to the producer's company details, but the obligation relates to data supplied by producers to their schemes each quarter. Every register producer is given a Producer Registration Number by the Agency which they keep year on year. Under Regulation 14, producers should declare this to any distributor they supply although there is no prescribed format. The EA keep a public register of registered producers.

As well as registering, producers must also ensure that all their products are marked with the crossed out wheelie bin symbol and with their Producer Identification Mark which identifies their company as the producer. Generally, this is the company logo.

It is an offence to place EEE on the UK market and not be registered. If you sell equipment to end users in other member states ie NOT through a commercial body in that country, the Regulations require you to register in that country under their Regulatory requirements.

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Summary

The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations 2006 came into force in January 2007 and were fully implemented on 1 July 2007. Amending Regulations were introduced late in 2007 to correct some anomalies. They are under the responsibility of the Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) and there are approximately 5,000 businesses registered as producers through 40 compliance schemes. BIS have issued a Guidance Document that has no legal authority, but which is the basis for much of the interpretation of the Regulations.

New Amending Regulations have been published (10 Nov) that introduce a range of significant changes for 2010 compliance year onwards. These include:

• Producers must now register by 15th November and PCSs must register by 30th November each year
• Evidence notes will be able to be issued on treatment alone for AATFs rather than the current requirement of needing to demonstrate recycling and recovery has occured. For AE’s they can only be issued on WEEE exported for reuse.
• A new definition of ‘non-obligated’ tonnage appears that has to be reported by AATFs and AEs – this is tonnage received that is not from a scheme.
• The sequence of dates have changed at the end of a compliance period.
  • First cut of data from the Agency 28 Feb instead of 1 Apr.
  • Second cut is 31 Mar instead of 1 May.
  • Declaration of compliance required by 30 Apr instead of 1 Jun.
  • Evidence notes have to be issued by 31 Jan (from the current 30th Apr) in relation to the previous year.
• Proof that the recycling and recovery targets have been met will be down to the AATF for evidence issued, not the scheme.
• Scheme reporting will have to show the AATF or AE to which it was delivered and include details of tonnage delivered under Reg 32 and 39.
• B2C and B2B EEE returns become annual by 31 Jan each year.
• Under Reg 33, the words ‘in writing’ have been added to a distributor’s requirement to provide information to the public.
• Scheme approval will become continuous – rather than for a three year period as current – but approval will then be subject to the agreement of an annual 3 year Operational plan submitted by 31 Jul.
• AATF quarterly returns are significantly simplified, removing a number of activity reports although they will have to now include the tonnage received and the evidence issued by Scheme. They must also report the tonnage of non-obligated WEEE received by category.
• AATF/AE auditors reports will be required by 31 Mar rather than 31 May.
• The option for the Secretary of State to buy evidence has been removed.
• The details that a Scheme must supply relating to their members must show the 2007 SIC code rather than the current 2003 version.
• Exported WEEE must meet the requirements of the Transfrontier Shipment Regs and evidence will only be able to be issued for whole WEEE - rather than partially treated – WEEE exports.

The Regulations apply very different responsibilities to producers for EEE supplied for non-household use (B2B) and EEE supplied for household use (B2C). The former applies more direct responsibility to producers in relation to who they supply whereas the latter works under a collective market share approach. B2B includes non-commercial organisations such as the public sector, charities etc.

B2C

The main focus of the Regulations to date has been on EEE sold for household use. The market share approach works by producers reporting the amount of EEE they place on the market and then being responsible for the costs relating to their market share of the waste EEE that is collected over the same period. This sounds relatively simple, but it is actually extremely complex as it demands a level of data collection, submission, analysis and calculation that makes packaging seem a walk in the park.
To start with, the data has to be reported under 13 categories. This therefore means that producers have to work out which category their EEE fits in. Much of it is obvious, but there are many items that could sit in a number of categories. Secondly, producers have to calculate the weight of the products they have placed on the market and not only that, but they must supply this data to their scheme on a quarterly basis so that the scheme can send it to the Agency by the end of the month following the quarter. Thirdly, data also has to be reported by schemes and treatment facilities on the same quarterly basis to the Agency for all WEEE that has been collected against which the market share will be applied. This will relate primarily to two sources of WEEE - that collected from local authority civic amenity sites and that collected by the big retailers when they deliver new appliances.

So schemes are effectively trying to hit a moving target as they are expected to only collect the amount of WEEE that they will need to meet their obligations. Which of course they don’t know until after the event.

But for producers, this is not their problem. Producers just have to register with a scheme, produce the quarterly data and pay their compliance scheme for the costs associated with the collection, treatment and recycling of their market share.

B2B

The WEEE Regulations impose two different responsibilities on producers for B2B WEEE depending on whether the WEEE is ‘historical’ or ‘new’. ‘Historical’ WEEE is classed as EEE that was placed on the UK market prior to August 15 2005. ‘New’ WEEE relates to EEE that has been placed on the market since that date. In theory, all ‘new’ WEEE should be marked with the crossed out wheelie bin symbol to identify it.
For ‘historical’ WEEE, producers have a responsibility, when they provide new equipment to a business, to take away, treat and recycle like for like WEEE free of charge. Therefore, a printer manufacturer supplies ten new printers to a business, it must offer to take away 10 old ones, regardless of brand. If the business has twenty old ones, then the business has responsibility for the disposal of the other ten.
For ‘new’ WEEE, producers have responsibility for their own brand. In theory, a business wanting to dispose of a printer that has the crossed out wheelie bin can request the brand owner to collect it free of charge and then deal with the disposal although BERR have stated that producers only have responsibility to collect free of charge from a collection point. So for ‘new’ WEEE, it should be as follows:
 

• End user wants to dispose of a large plasma screen TV.
• They look at the brand, go to the Environment Agency website, go to the public register, look up the brand name and see which scheme it belongs to.
• They then ring the scheme who tells them to take the TV to collection point X where it will be received under the scheme’s name. The scheme will then organise for the TV to be collected, treated and recycled and pass the bill back to their brand member.

B2B WEEE is therefore, in theory, covered. However, the reality is that most businesses will either store something if it stops working or organise disposal themselves by calling a waste management company.

The Regulations require all WEEE to be treated through an authorised treatment facility, but WEEE collected under the responsibilities of producers must go to an Approved Authorised Treatment Facility who must then register evidence that it has been treated through a BERR run body called the Settlement Centre. This is used to record the amount of either type of WEEE that has been treated, but it is particularly important for B2C WEEE as it allows schemes to trade evidence to ensure that at the end of a compliance period, it can demonstrate it has sufficient WEEE to meet its market share requirements.

IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT IN MOST CASES, WEEE IS NOT CONSIDERED TO BE HAZARDOUS WASTE. ONLY THOSE ITEMS LISTED IN THE EWC CODES AS HAZARDOUS OR CONTAINING SUCH ITEMS, WILL BE CONSIDERED HAZARDOUS AND MUST THEREFORE BE COLLECTED WITH CONSIGNMENT NOTES.

Items generally considered to be hazardous include:

Fluorescent tubes, CRT and LCD based television screens and monitors, fridges and freezers, items containing mercury and lead, mercury and NiCd batteries.

A recent explanatory note from the EA has confirmed that Laptops are considered to be hazardous by virtue of their screen being backlit by mini fluorescent tubes containing mercury, regardless of the type of battery they contain.

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Scope

The WEEE Regulations apply to any equipment that requires electrical current – from batteries or mains – to perform its primary function. Therefore, a teddy bear with a tape recorder built in would in scope, but a teddy bear that just says ‘goodnight’ would not. This is because the electric current performs an important function in the use of the product in the first example, but it does not in the second.

There are certain EU specific exemptions.

• Items using more than 1,000 volts AC or 1,500 volts DC
• Equipment designed and used purely for military purposes
• Large scale industrial equipment eg a floor mounted lathe
• Equipment that forms part of a non-electrical product eg a timer in a gas installation
• Household lighting equipment
• Fixed installations eg an alarm system installed by a professional

Guidance has been produced by the Agencies to help define what is and isn’t EEE and what should be classed as B2B and B2C. It is a 'living' document, mainly for internal use, but it includes some fairly fundamental changes to what had previously been considered out of scope but which must now be considered in scope and reported. These include:

1. There has been a tightening of the ‘primary function’ requirement to include ‘it is sold based on the idea that the functions that depend on electricity to work add an important feature and value to the product’ although the Guidance still states tha novelty items such as singing greetings cards or flashing ties are out.
2. Any sports equipment which has an electrical item attached, even if it is not integral to the working of the equipment, is in scope. Eg a fitness cycle with an electric timer.
3. Items sold as ‘finished products’ are in regardless of whether they are then fitted to another product eg antennae, connecting cables, sound cards, keyboards
4. Car stereos sold separately but which are then fitting and wired into a car are out as they will be with the car at end of life. But after market sat navs, DVD players etc which are portable are in.
5. All household lighting – internal and external – is out other than gas discharge bulbs and tubes. Torches, however, are in and should be reported under Category 2 as are sunbeds which should be reported under Category 2 whilst the bulbs are reported under Category 5.
6. Large scale industrial tools have been more clearly defined. Any single, stand alone tools – lathe, pallet wrapping machine etc – is in regardless of whether it is fixed. Only those items that are a combination of several pieces of equipment, systems, finished products or components designed to be used in an industrial environment only, are put together by an assembler or installer at a given place and designed to be permanently fixed; and are put together at a given place to be used in a specific environment to perform a specific task. Are out of scope – eg windfarms, production lines, oil rigs!!
7. Household furniture with an electrical function is out, strangely even though that contradicts 1. above.
8. Chip and pin and credit cards are out, but memory cards, SIM cards, RFID and any other tracking devices are in.
9. Wind up electrical items are in.

The new Guidance also lays out the process to determine whether items should be classed as B2C or B2B. Effectively, the default position is that where there is any ambiguity, the items should be considered to be B2C. Anything sold for home offices, therefore, should be considered as B2C.At the end of the day, the Regulations state that it is the responsibility of the producer to determine whether something is in scope. So long as the producer has a valid reason for deciding it is out of scope based on the above criteria, the Agency can only challenge the decision – ultimately in the courts – if it disagrees.

The EU Directive divides EEE and WEEE into 10 categories. The UK has chosen to pull cooling equipment out of Category 1, Display equipment out of categories 3&4 and gas discharge lamps out of category 5 to create an additional 3 categories. Producers must therefore decide which category to list their equipment under from the following:

1. Large household appliances (e.g. white goods less cooling equipment);
2. Small household appliances (e.g. vacuums, irons, toasters etc.);
3. IT and telecoms equipment (e.g. computers, printers, calculators, phones, answer machines etc. but not displays);
4. Consumer equipment (e.g. radios, hi-fi equipment, electronic musical instruments etc.but not televisions);
5. Lighting equipment (but not household lighting)
6. Electrical and electronic tools (e.g. drills, saws, sewing machines etc., but excluding large stationary industrial tools);
7. Toys and leisure and sports equipment (e.g. train sets, video games, coin slot machines etc.);
8. Medical devices (e.g. dialysis machines, ventilators etc.) (Note that this category is not covered by the RoHS Directive at present – see below.);
9. Monitoring and Control instruments (e.g. smoke detectors, thermostats etc.) (Note that this category is also not covered by the RoHS Directive at present.); and
10. Automatic dispensers (e.g. ATMs, vending machines etc.).
11. Display equipment (e.g. TVs and monitors)
12. Cooling equipment (e.g. refrigeration equipment)
13. Gas discharge lamps

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How the system works

• There is no threshold for producers. If a company manufacturers, imports or sells EEE products under its own brand, they are a producer and must register. 
• Producers cannot register direct with an Agency. They must either register with an approved Producer Compliance Scheme (PCS) or they can apply to become a single member compliance scheme in their own right. But to do this requires a fee of £12,500 and has to be submitted in August for the year ahead.
• Registration with a scheme is required by 15 October for the following year and should include a range of company information which the PCS must submit to the Agency by 31 October.
• During the compliance year, by the middle of the month following each quarter, each member will be required to submit data to their scheme for the amount of B2B and B2C EEE for each of the 13 categories it placed on the market during the quarter.
  • For B2B, the data is mainly just used by government for the purpose of reporting statistics to the EU.
  • For B2C:
  • The Agency aggregates all the data from schemes and then sends them back their market in relation to each category.
• All schemes are supposed to have contracts in place for the collection of WEEE from local authority Civic Amenity sites (known as Designated Collection Facilities or DCFs) and other types of collection point that broadly equates to what they think they might need. Schemes also have to send data to the Agency each quarter with the amount of WEEE they have collected from these sites by category.
• A scheme ‘obligation’ is then calculated by applying their market share in a category to the amount of WEEE collected in that category. This is done per quarter and then finalised by the Environment Agency in April following each annual compliance period to give the total annual obligation that the scheme must then balance.
• Where a scheme has over collected, it must therefore sell evidence and vice versa where it has under collected.
• Because the market share gets applied to all the collected WEEE that is reported, there will always be exactly the right amount of evidence for everyone. As it is impossible for schemes to know exactly what tonnage of evidence to plan for, there will inevitably be some trading, but the idea is that schemes collect broadly the right amount and trading is kept to a minimum. 
• Unfortunately, the current situation is that there is a significant mismatch between obligation and supply for some schemes and therefore the need for a large amount of trading. The government expects this to be dealt with under the changes proposed by their December Consultation.
• Evidence is only valid if it is placed onto a BERR run Settlement Centre. This gives government a real time overview on who has what evidence and is the place where evidence is transferred from one scheme to another when a trade has been agreed.
• Data is published by the Environment Agency for each Quarter. A summary of data to date is available here.

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Retailer responsibilities

Retailers of electrical equipment are confusingly know as ‘distributors’. Distributors are responsible for providing ‘an adequate network’ of free disposal facilities to consumers for B2C WEEE. This responsibility is discharged through two methods:

1. Distributors can sign up to the Distributor Takeback Scheme run by Valpak. This attracts a fee which is used to fund Local Authorities to enhance their Civic Amenity sites to accept the different groups of WEEE. Signing up to the DTS exempts a distributor from having to take back anything in store.
2. Distributors can elect to offer in store takeback. They would have to offer to take back on a one-for-one basis, any product of a similar type sold by them eg if they sold DVD players, they would have to take back cassette players. This requirement applies whether products are sold in a store, delivered to a customers premises or sold on-line. If this option is taken, stores – and on-line sellers through the website – must display notices to say that in store takeback is offered.

Whatever option is taken, distributers also have a requirement to display information about the environmental impact of WEEE and how it can be recycled. Details of what should be displayed can be found on the website of the VCA who police the retailer responsibilities.

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Fees

The Regulations apply a scale of fees that must be paid to the appropriate Agency each year on registration. These will be charged by a Producer Compliance Scheme in addition to their membership fees and are as follows:

• For companies with a total UK turnover regardless of whether that turnover relates to imports, exports, UK manufacture, electrical equipment or any non-electrical equipment:
  • Less than the VAT threshold and not registered for VAT - £30
  • Registered for VAT but below £1m turnover in the last financial year - £220
  • Above £2m turnover in the last financial year - £445

Scheme will then charge additional fees in relation to membership and the cost of evidence. Evidence costs wil tend to vary significantly between schemes as they will relate more to the actual costs of collection and treatment than to the supply and demand position (unlike Packaging PRNs). Therefore, a scheme that is collecting WEEE from high cost rural DCFs might be more expensive than one collecting from urban sites. There is also considerable difference in the mark up applied by schemes with some charging for evidence at cost and others adding a significant margin, so it pays to shop around.

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Producer Compliance Schemes

34 Producer Compliance Schemes are now registered under WEEE, however, there is no easy way to compare their costs or services.
As of 11 February 2010, the public register lists 5,178 registered producers split between the schemes as shown below. 

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Current situation

Further Amending Regulations have now been published which take effect from 1 January 2010. These include the following changes:

• Evidence notes will be able to be issued on treatment alone for AATFs rather than the current requirement of needing to demonstrate recycling and recovery has occured. For AE’s they can only be issued on WEEE exported for reuse.
• A new definition of ‘non-obligated’ tonnage appears that has to be reported by AATFs and AEs – this is tonnage received that is not from a scheme.
• The sequence of dates have changed at the end of a compliance period.
• First cut of data from the Agency 28 Feb instead of 1 Apr.
• Second cut is 31 Mar instead of 1 May.
• Declaration of compliance required by 30 Apr instead of 1 Jun.
• Evidence notes have to be issued by 31 Jan (from the current 30th Apr) in relation to the previous year.
• Proof that the recycling and recovery targets have been met will be down to the AATF for evidence issued, not the scheme.
• Scheme reporting will have to show the AATF or AE to which it was delivered and include details of tonnage delivered under Reg 32 and 39.
• B2C returns remain quarterly but B2B become annual by 31 Jan each year.
• Under Reg 33, the words ‘in writing’ have been added to a distributor’s requirement to provide information to the public.
• Scheme approval will become continuous – rather than for a three year period as current – but approval will then be subject to the agreement of an annual 3 year Operational plan submitted by 31 Jul.
• AATF quarterly returns are significantly simplified, removing a number of activity reports although they will have to now include the tonnage received and the evidence issued by Scheme. They must also report the tonnage of non-obligated WEEE received by category.
• AATF/AE auditors reports will be required by 31 Mar rather than 31 May.
• The option for the Secretary of State to buy evidence has been removed.
• The details that a Scheme must supply relating to their members must show the 2007 SIC code rather than the current 2003 version.
• Exported WEEE must meet the requirements of the Transfrontier Shipment Regs and evidence will only be able to be issued for whole WEEE - rather than partially treated – WEEE exports.

There is also an EU review underway, the first results of which were published at the end of 2008. The key proposals are as follows:

• harmonise the registration and reporting obligations for producers and make national registers of producers inter-operational. This is expected to lead to potential savings of €60 million;
• clarify the scope and definitions;
• change the collection target from the current 4kg/capita per year ("one size fits all") to a variable target that takes into account the economies of individual member States. The new target is set at 65% of the average weight of products placed on the market in the two preceding years. Although many Member States have already reached this target it becomes binding in 2016, thus giving other Member States time to adjust;
• a combined recycling and re-use target which is socially and environmentally viable that will sort out current deterrents to re-using;
• enhance environmental benefits and material savings by including recovery and recycling/re-use targets for medical devices;
• set minimum inspection requirements for Member States to strengthen the enforcement of the directive and include minimum monitoring requirements for shipping WEEE;
• make Member States, where appropriate, encourage producers to finance all the costs of separate collection;
• allow producers to show to consumers at the time of sale the cost of collection, treatment and disposal of products in an environmentally-sound manner, without time limitation and for all equipments. This is in line with the principles of sustainable consumption and production and ensures that consumers can make informed purchasing choices.

Probably the most significant change would be the 65% collection target which is being proposed for both household and non-household WEEE and would be applied to the average of the previous two year's tonnage placed on the market. This could be tricky for the UK where the rates of reported WEEE collected currently stand at around 30% for household and 4% for non-household.
It is proposed that this target would apply from 2016, so it is likely that if implemented, the UK would have stepped targets in the years leading up to that point. But it does beg the question of how you meet a collection target if people don’t dispose of electrical products.

Details of the proposals can be found in the documents at the bottom of this page although this link gives the best single summary.

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WEEE Contacts

Contact details for queries or direct registration

BIS – email

VCA

Environment Agency - 08708 506 506
 

SEPA – 01786 457700
 

NIEA - 028 90 546 408
 

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