Registration and enforcement in the UK
The Producer is required to register as a condition of placing products on the market in the UK.
The register comprises three sections covering England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Registration is with the relevant environment agency. Producers may register directly or through a third party (such as a compliance scheme).
The enforcement agencies are:
Recovery targets
Targets for recovery and recycling are set out in the WEEE Directive. The target varies for different categories of equipment and is based on percentage weight of separately collected WEEE. See the table below.
Medical equipment is the only category for which no targets exist. Although it is covered by the scope of the WEEE Directive.
If different categories of WEEE share the same targets then the figures can be combined. In theory, this may mean that under-performance in targets for one product category could be compensated for by over performance in another.
A mass balance approach may be used to simplify the reporting of figures. For example, it may be agreed that 15% of the plastic waste in a particular grade of scrap be derived from WEEE.
Targets |
|
Description |
Recovery (recycling plus
waste to energy) |
|
1 |
large household appliances |
80% |
75% |
2 |
small household appliances
|
70% |
50% |
3 |
IT and telecoms equipment
|
75% |
65% |
4 |
|
75% |
65% |
5 |
|
70% |
50% |
6 |
electrical and electronic tools
|
70% |
50% |
7 |
|
70% |
50% |
8 |
|
no target |
no target |
9 |
|
70% |
50% |
10 |
auto-dispensing machines (vending machines, cash machines, ticket machines). |
80% |
75% |
Measuring collected WEEE
The Directive sets a national collection target of 4Kg of WEEE per head of population.
Producers have a legal obligation to report recovery and recycling data, but this may be discharged through a compliance scheme.
It is very difficult to attribute WEEE directly to particular producers because of the way it will be collected. Skips of WEEE going to treatment facilities could contain a mix of different products from different producers. Data on the recycling and recovery of different categories may be produced by using protocols that set down the average amount of separately collected WEEE in each category.
The UK Government proposed that these categories be simplified and represented by “groupings” for collection. See the section on “Compliance Options” for further details.
The UK Government proposed that, rather than requiring producers to report sales data according to these groupings as well as the Directive’s product categories, a protocol should be created converting market shares, based on sales data by product category, into these collection groupings for the purposes of making allocations to producers. The UK system breaks down some product categories into sub-categories. There are 13 categories for the purpose of reporting in the UK.
This is the position in the UK. The situation in other EU States is covered elsewhere in this toolkit.
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