Businesses must recycle electronic and electrical goods under
the UK's Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)
Regulations, which were passed to bring the UK into line with a
European Union directive.
The Regulations have been in force for 18 months and the
Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) has
said that improvements must be made to the way the Regulations are
implemented. It has begun a consultation with business on the
proposed changes.
The European Commission has also published proposals this month
to review and amend WEEE rules, but BERR said that it would consult
seperately on those changes.
The Government wants to reduce the amount of information that
has to be sent by recyclers to environment agencies, allow the
Distributor Take-back Scheme to continue to operate, and allow
schemes operated on behalf of producers of waste to operate without
constantly seeking re-approval.
"My priority is to streamline the system and build on the
successful implementation of the existing regulations, while
reducing the administrative burden placed on businesses by the
requirements for demonstrating compliance," said Business and
Economic Minister, Ian Pearson.
"We are now almost eighteen months into the UK WEEE system and I
am very pleased to see that some real and impressive achievements
have been made," said Pearson. "Now is an appropriate time to
consider the lessons we have learned and look at how we can revise
the regulations in order to move forward."
Helen Keele is an expert on the WEEE Regulations at Pinsent
Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, and she said that the
changes would be welcomed.
"They are necessary reforms to make the collection and recycling
of waste and the licensing and scheme processes work more
efficiently and in a way which people can plan around," she said.
"It does need some fine tuning."
Producers mostly have collective responsibility for waste
collection and recycling, and the Government said that it still
believed this to be the most efficient approach. It said, though,
that it sought ideas from industry on how to increase the
individual producers' responsibility for waste.
Producer Compliance Schemes (PCS) will meet with lighter
regulation under the proposals because they will no longer have to
reapply every year for permission to operate.
Schemes will still have to submit plans on how they intend
to operate, though. The Government has said in its consultation
that it wants PCS to do more to collect small electric and
electronic waste, which is still largely thrown away by consumers
in domestic waste.
"Producer Compliance Schemes need to do more to ensure the
collection of small WEEE," it said. "One aspect of this is
publicity. Raising consumer awareness of the options available to
them for the disposal of WEEE in an environmentally friendly and
responsible manner, particularly smaller items, remains a
significant challenge for Government and industry."
The consultation will close on 6 April next year, and the
Government hopes to lay revised Regulations before Parliament in
spring of next year. The Regulations will come into force
before 1 January 2010.
