Why WEEE is a big problem

WEEE as you all know (you do know don’t you?) stands for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment. The EU alone produces over 6 million tonnes of waste electrical equipment per year, much of it toxic, and it’s growing fast. Separating all this from other waste and reusing, recycling or disposing of it is a major problem. The WEEE regulations are intended to address this issue. Good background information is available from the Environment Agency or from the DTI website

No doubt you also aware that anyone who manufactures, imports, re-brands, distributes, sells, stores, treats, dismantles, recycles, disposes or uses Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) has obligations under the regulations which came into force in the UK on the 2nd January 2007. That’ll be just about everybody then!

What do you need to do?

To start with all producers (OPENXTRA imports products from outside the EU so we are classed as a producer) have to join a producer compliance scheme and register by 17th March 2007, there are no exemptions for any business no matter how small or how low the turnover.

All equipment must be marked in the approved way, a crossed out wheely bin symbol and a producers identification mark.

You must collect and treat all your own WEEE, and in certain circumstances accept what’s called historic WEEE, even if you didn’t make it in the first place! (Historic WEE is anything produces before 13th August 2005)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 11th, 2007 @ 10:50 am on the category General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.