The WEEE regulations abide by the polluter pays principle, which places the burden of disposing of waste electrical and electronic equipments on the manufacture, either by providing a free collection service for customers themselves or by signing up to a compliance scheme offered by a government-approved waste handling firm. Factors to consider before implementing the WEEE regulations include:
1. Is the product classified as electrical and electronic equipment?
The WEEE Directive requirements pertain specifically to electrical and electronic equipments, which are equipment that are dependent on electricity to work properly and fall under any of the following ten categories and with a voltage of up to 1000 volts for alternating current or up to 1500 volts for direct current. These categories include large household appliances; small household appliances; IT and telecommunications equipment; consumer equipment; lighting equipment; electrical and electronic tools; toys, leisure and sports equipment; medical devices; monitoring and control equipment; automatic dispensers.
2. Is the product exempted from the application of the WEEE requirements?
The WEEE Directive exempts certain categories of electrical and electronic equipments. This includes contaminated and implanted medical devices, equipments intended for military purposes, stationary large industrial tools, consumables and spare parts for electrical and electronic equipments. The Directive does not also apply to equipment forming part of another type of equipment not covered by the WEEE regulations, and high voltage equipment, designed to exceed 1000 volts AC or 1500 volts DC.
3. Would the WEEE Directive be applicable to me?
The WEEE Directive is mainly applicable to producers and distributors, although distributors are required to fulfil the requirements of taking back WEEE when selling new electrical and electronic equipments, the core obligations under the Directive fall on the producer. Within the European Union, the manufacturer is designated as the producer, whereas this responsibility falls to the importer if the goods are manufactured outside the European Union. In most jurisdictions, only the producers of the finished products would take on the recycling and other obligations, but this differs amongst the various Member States and producers are responsible for verifying the position of the country in which they place the equipments on the market.
4. What are my obligations as a producer?
Producers are obliged to fund the collection, treatment, recovery and disposal of WEEE; register with the relevant authority in the market they place the equipment, label all electrical and electronic equipment put on the market after the 13th of August 2005 with the crossed out wheelie bin symbol; and guarantee that they will be able to finance the management of separately collected waste electrical and electronic equipment from domestic households.
5. What are my obligations as a distributor?
Distributors are obliged to ensure that their suppliers are registered with the environmental regulator as producers; set up a free take back system by which households can use to dispose of their waste equipment; provide customers with information on the environmental impacts of their waste equipments; maintain records of the amount of units of waste equipment returned to them from private households; and keep evidence of its compliance for four years.
6. How can these obligations be fulfilled?
Producers can fulfil their obligations by either joining a Producer Compliance Scheme which would be responsible for their registration with the Environment Agency; or set up their own private scheme. Distributors can fulfil their obligations by either utilising the take-back scheme which works through a network of designated collection facilities where the consumer can dispose of waste equipments free of charge; or the in-store take-back scheme which involves accepting a waste item from customers in store when selling them an equivalent new item.
It is essential to get specific information about the position of WEEE in the Member State where the equipments are to be placed on the market, because there are national variations on the implementation of WEEE Directive
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