News and New Products

WEEE Legislation Vague, Advice Conflicting

By Richard Ball -- Electronics Weekly, 12/21/2006

Conflicting advice, vague legislation and a lack of compliance schemes are the realities of WEEE, the electrical waste legislation, in the U.K., according to law firm Eversheds.

With just six months until the WEEE legislation goes live, most electronics companies are unclear over their obligations in respect to the WEEE directive, said Jane Southworth, a senior associate in the regulatory team at Eversheds.

"Business is very confused because scope [of the directive] is very vague," she told Electronics Weekly. "I've had clients who have gone to the DTI [Department of Trade and Industry], Envirowise and a consultant and got three very different views."

Companies  manufacturing or selling OEM parts, or working in the business to business (B2B) sector, are most likely to be unsure.

"It's the only legislation I know of where there is no clear list of what's in scope," explained Southworth.

Her advice for companies working at the fringe of the legislation, especially SMEs and smaller companies, is to research as much as possible and be prepared to justify decisions to the regulator -- the Environment Agency (EA).

She expects the EA to take a similar approach to National Weights and Measures (NWML), which is tasked with policing the RoHS legislation. If NWML finds a company not complying with RoHS, it said it will prefer to help them comply, leaving prosecution as a last resort.

Compliance Scheme Problems

There are also issues looming around compliance schemes. Registration with a scheme is mandatory for all producers, manufacturers and importers by March 15, 2007, yet the schemes themselves have not registered with the EA.

"The government is not issuing guidance notes for registering schemes until mid-January," said Southworth. The EA has to vet and approve perhaps 20 schemes by the end of January, leaving a mere six weeks for all producers to register with a scheme.

Southworth believes the January 31 deadline is unlikely to be met by the EA, cutting into time for producer registration.

"Schemes won't know their prices, and it's a very short time for producers to make a choice of scheme," she said.

This means producers still have no idea what costs will need to be passed onto consumers in the form of price rises.

Electronics Weekly is the London-based sister publication of Electronic News, part of the EDN Network.