The European Recycling Platform (ERP) has launched a new compliance package in advance of the European Union’s recast of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Devices (WEEE) Directive coming into force in February 2014.

The ‘Europe Plus Package’ will provide producers and importers of electronic equipment a variety of support services to ensure they are compliant with the new legislation.

The WEEE recast, which officially became law in July 2012, ‘restricts the use of hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment and promotes the collection and recycling of such equipment’. It assigns ‘greater producer responsibility by encouraging full life cycle analysis’ and broadens the scope of equipment covered to include those containing ozone-depleting substances and mercury.

Further, the recast outlines that from 2016, member states must collect 45 per cent of the weight of EEE placed on their markets, rising to 65 per cent of EEE placed on their national market, or 85 per cent of WEEE generated in their national market in 2019. Although some EU member states will be given a degree of flexibility in achieving the targets (such as the Czech Republic and Latvia where there is lower consumption of electronic devices), it is hoped that 85 per cent of all WEEE produced in the EU will be recycled in 2020, equating to approximately 20 kilograms per person.

Europe Plus Package details

ERP is now calling upon member states to become ‘recast ready’ by signing up to its Europe Plus Package. Services provided as part of the new package include:

• a ‘one-stop shop’ for WEEE, waste battery and packaging compliance needs;
• access to ‘high-level specialist advice’; and
• availability of IT tools for reporting purposes

Existing ERP clients have welcomed the announcement, with Peter Cossé, Director of Environmental Affairs & Product Compliance at Toshiba Europe GmbH, saying: “The WEEE recast has set challenging targets and anything that compliance schemes can do to assist producers/industry to meet these targets is very much welcomed by us.”

Umberto Raiteri, President and Chief Executive Officer of ERP, added: “The progressive reduction in the collection of WEEE going through the formal system is alarming as there is no guarantee that this electronic waste is being treated in line with the essential quality and safety standards.

“ERP will ensure that the new European WEEE Directive is implemented in a fair and proper way all over Europe. Hopefully, this will make it possible to reduce the ‘WEEE drain’ and meet the ambitious collection and treatment targets imposed by the new directive. The Europe Plus Package is our response to demand from the market and it will ensure that all our members are ‘recast ready’.”

UK WEEE regulation changes

In light of the recast EU WEEE Directive, the UK Government has also outlined that current UK WEEE legislation may need to be reformed to ensure compliance with the EU law.

The Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) consultation – ‘Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE): implementing the recast Directive and UK system changes’ – launched in April, sought views on how the UK’s WEEE Regulations 2006 should be amended to align with the European recast, and to ‘respond to concerns from UK producers of electrical and electronic equipment under the Environmental Theme of the Red Tape Challenge about the cost of meeting their financial obligations under the UK WEEE Regulations’.

In the foreword to the consultation document, Michael Fallon MP, Minster of State for Business and Enterprise, said that the new regulations were ‘unavoidable…to ensure a level playing field that drives competition and stimulates innovation whilst ensuring environmental objectives and compliance with the obligations laid down in the revised WEEE Directive are achieved’.

According to the responses to the consultation, the most favoured changes that could be made to the UK law would be: setting a collection target and compliance fee for producers (95 per cent listed this as their first or second ‘most preferred option’); or establishing a matching process of collection sites to producer compliance schemes (PCSs), which would see local authorities matched with PCSs ‘based on their obligations by collection stream or cost base according to EEE market share’.

BIS had initially said that it was to publish its response in September, however, no such document has yet been released.

Read more about the Europe Plus Package or learn more about the EU’s recast WEEE Directive.