The Haz Guide

Under the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations 2006 from 1 July 2007 all distributors supplying EEE to householders must provide facilities to enable their customers to return old equipment free of charge when buying a replacement item.

Distributors can meet this obligation in several ways. They can offer takeback either in store or at local collection points, or they can join the Distributor Takeback Scheme (DTS) operated by Valpak Retail WEEE Services Ltd. DTS membership fees support a network of Designated Collection Facilities (DCFs), primarily at local authority sites, where consumers can dispose of their household WEEE free of charge. Local authorities can either apply for their HWRCs (or waste transfer stations) to become DCFs as part of the WEEE collection network. They can stay outside of the DTS and pay for the treatment of their separately collected WEEE themselves. All local authorities that operate HWRCs have registered their sites as DCFs. You can see a list of DCFs on the Valpak website here. There are 1569 DCFs in total (February 2008). These are broken down as follows: HWRCs 1113, Commercial DCF (businesses operating as DCFs) 105, not-for-profit organisations (usually charity reuse sector) 71, regional distribution centres (retailer collection by DTS members) 39 and waste transfer stations (usually bulky waste collections) 241.

DCFs have to meet the standards outlined in the producer code of practice, which was developed by local authorities and producer schemes and published by the BERR in early 2007. There are no message, storage or transport standards that are required, although agreement will be developed between local authorities and partner producer compliance schemes. The main commitment in the code of practice is to allow producer schemes access to separately collected WEEE, having collected it in line with some basic requirements. A payment of £6,000 was made by the DTS to local authorities for every HWRC registered as a DCF. Where councils can demonstrate requirement for additional funding at a particular site, this is available up to a total of £9,000.

Any distributors opting for in-store take back will not be able to register their premises as DCFs. Distributors offering in-store take back can return collected WEEE to a PCS or an AATF working on their behalf. The distributor is required to meet any costs arising from the transportation of the WEEE to the AATF. The cost of treatment, recycling and recovery will remain the obligation of the PCS.

The WEEE regulations place an obligation on producers of EEE to ensure that a proportion of waste electrical and electronic equipment is re-used or treated and recovered. To show that producers have met their obligations they need to get evidence from the treatment facilities or the exporters of separately collected WEEE that it has been treated and recovered. Only approved authorised treatment facilities (AATFs) or approved exporters (AEs) can issue evidence notes. These evidence notes can only be issued against separately collected WEEE that has been delivered to an AATF or AE by or on behalf of a producer compliance scheme (PCS) or a local authority DCF (where there is no contract with a PCS). Any WEEE entering the system (for example direct from an end-user) will not have obligations on it and must not have evidence issued against it. Guidance for issuing evidence notes is available from the Environment Agency here.