Financial guarantees in respect of household WEEE

The provisions of Article 28 of the UK WEE Regulations cover the discharging of responsibilities for financing separately collected WEEE. These include requirements for financial guarantees to ensure that the costs of future WEEE are met. Producers are able to show, for a transitional period, at the point of sale to consumers, the costs of collection and recovery of old products when selling new equipment (visible fee). Article 8 of the WEEE Directive suggests how guarantees for future WEEE might be provided, including by participation in an appropriate scheme for financing management of WEEE, blocked bank accounts or recycling insurance.

The UK Government's interpretation of the WEEE Directive's provisions on producer financial guarantees is that the objective is to ensure that the costs of treatment, recovery and responsible end disposal of WEEE arising from products sold to the household market would be covered in the event of a producer departing from the market e.g. in the event of insolvency. The Directive requires that the costs of this 'orphan WEEE' should not fall on others in society.

The regulations require that those producers putting electrical and electronic equipment onto the UK market must register as a condition of doing so.  Having registered, producers will be given an allocated WEEE target.

This approach, in which producers' responsibilities in each compliance period are allocated and enforced on the basis of market share, means there is a systemic guarantee that the costs of orphan WEEE are met in each compliance period. Consequently, when producers register they are undertaking to fund their share of collected WEEE.

Visible fees

The use of visible fees is voluntary in the UK , the situation varies between EU Member States. The Directive allows the use of visible fees for a specified transitional period to cover the costs of recycling historic household WEEE. This is allowed for eight years from the commencement of the regulations in respect of sales of all new products within the Directive's scope except for new equipment in the Directive's Annex 1A, category 1 (large household goods), where it is allowed for ten years.

It is prohibited for a product to show separately the costs of collecting, treating and recovering waste arising from new household electrical and electronic equipment put on the market after commencement of the regulations. The arrangements between producers, retailers and/or distributors are a commercial matter for the parties concerned.

Summary

Producers need to put financial guarantees into place to cover the costs of recovering and recycling household WEEE. They can do this by:

• Allocating funds to a bank account.
• Insurance policies.
• Joining an accredited compliance scheme (the scheme will provide the financial guarantee).