New WEEE Regulations and Guidance Notes
Friday December 14 2007
The Government has amended the WEEE Regulations in an attempt to improve the way the Producer Responsibility system works for waste electrical and electronic equipment.
The changes are relatively minor and were laid before parliament on Wednesday this week with five main areas having been altered:
- A tightening of the system of issuing evidence of WEEE re-use;
- A change to require evidence to be issued to the nearest kilogramme, rather than the nearest tonne;
- A right for final holders of household WEEE (such as repair companies) to hand the equipment into a collection point free-of-charge;
- The extension of the February deadline to April for submitting the previous year’s compliance evidence;
- An additional regulation allowing the Secretary of State to publish the acceptable format for records used by distributors
The changes to The UK WEEE Regulations will come into effect on January 1st 2008 which marks the second compliance period within the WEEE producer responsibility system.
BERR also an updated Guidance Notes along with the amended Regulations. The Guidance Notes cover the obligations which the WEEE Regulations place on producers who put electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) onto the UK market, and obligations on distributors of EEE in the UK. They also cover the roles and implications for others including Local Authorities, the waste management industry, the charitable and voluntary sector, and implications for users and consumers of EEE, and others.
