Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)
The aim of the
WEEE directive (#2002/96/EC) is to limit the
amount of electrical and electronic waste in EU landfills.
For details and
amendments see the
EUROPA website. The WEEE mandate, as well as its companion
RoHS directive, affects all electrical and electronic
products in certain categories that are sold in the EU
market (sometimes referred to as the Single Market), whether
to consumers or to businesses.
The implementation date for the WEEE
directive was
August 13, 2005, but many EU countries have
delayed implementation – the exact form of which is allowed
to vary across the member states.
WEEE and RoHS categories
There are 10 broad
categories of products that are covered by WEEE and RoHS
legislation:
-
Large household
appliances
-
Small household
appliances
-
IT and telecommunications
equipment
-
Consumer equipment
-
Lighting equipment
(including electric light bulbs)
-
Electrical and electronic
tools (with the exception of large-scale stationary
industrial tools)
-
Toys, leisure and sports
equipment
-
Medical equipment
(currently exempt from RoHS)
-
Monitoring and control
instruments (currently exempt from RoHS)
-
Automatic dispensers.
Exemptions
Two types of WEEE are exempt from the
requirements of the rule: military equipment and large-scale
stationary industrial equipment.
Producer obligations
The WEEE rule is broader in scope and makes
more demands on manufacturers than RoHS, which only concerns
materials in the product. The principal requirements of the
WEEE directive are:
-
Consumer WEEE must be
collected and recycled free of charge to the consumer,
although recycling can be financed through a fee on new
purchases. Producers are required to take back the WEEE.
-
Producers who sell new
equipment to businesses must arrange for take-back of
older (sold before August 2005) WEEE and for collection
of newer WEEE, and can charge a fee for these services.
Businesses that choose not to return older WEEE to the
producer must arrange to have it recycled.
-
Collected WEEE must be
treated to remove all fluids, as well as
mercury-containing components, CRTs (from which the
fluorescent coating has to be removed), larger LCDs and
a number of other specific components.
-
New electrical and
electronic products must be labeled to show the
producer, the date of manufacture or date put on the
market, any instructions for recycling, a crossed-out
wheeled bin symbol, and specific items that need to be
removed from the product when it is collected as WEEE.
In addition, producers are encouraged to
design electrical and electronic equipment to facilitate
reuse, recycling and recovery of the components and
materials.
Who is a producer?
Producers include all manufacturers planning
to sell electrical and electronic products in the EU market,
those who rebrand another manufacturer’s products and resell
them as their own, and importers or distributors of products
in either of these categories. The producer is considered
to be whoever puts the product on the EU market for the
first time. In practice, this is often the importer, which
means that in most cases it is the importer’s responsibility
to meet the WEEE requirements summarized above.
Implementation date
Although the target implementation date
(August 13, 2005) has already passed, only seven EU members
were able to meet the deadline on time: Belgium, Finland,
Hungary, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.
However, all the other member states have agreed to
implement take-back systems for WEEE as soon as practicable,
so that only the timetable for achieving recycling targets
is likely to be delayed for any length of time.
The UK
plans to introduce producer responsibility and WEEE
take-back obligations in June 2006. It expects to achieve
collection and recycling targets by the end of the year.
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