The Mess WEEE Made
By Suzanne Deffree -- 8/10/2005
Chaos. Confusion. Complicated. These are all words to describe this last week of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive among the European Union’s 25 member states. With a scheduled deadline for final legislation of Saturday, August 13, several EU countries still have not transposed the directive into law.
“The status of the directive in Europe is in great disarray,” said Mark Myles, services director at The GoodBye Chain Group, a software, services and training provider for electronics and electrical products companies.
“The directive has an audience of about 25 EU member states, which by treaty obligation are required to take the European Parliament directives and convert them or transpose them into their own national laws. The member states vary all over the place in terms of their status of the transposition process, and even for those that have transposed, where they are with regard to actually establishing the practical regulatory set up that will govern the way it is regulated in their own country.”
Among those countries that will meet the deadline include the Netherlands, Finland and Belgium, member states Myles described as ones with previous WEEE-like laws that enforce electronics and electrical product recycling. Countries that will not meet the deadline, according to The GoodBye Chain Group, include such electronics powerhouse as Germany and the United Kingdom, a surprising laggard that won’t catch up until 2006.
“The position across Europe in general is that 19 countries have transposed the WEEE legislation in place. Twenty one countries have transposed the RoHS [the Restriction on Hazardous Substances directive], but there are still several European states – six – that have not gotten the WEEE in place.”
Several problems exist within WEEE’s history, including an unclear definition of what technologies would be affected --- which The GoodBye Chain Group’s Myles simplifies to “anything with a plug or batteries” -- and who in the supply chain is responsible as a “producer” -- which in the directive covers retailers, manufacturers and distributors -- for WEEE compliance. A July document from the Commercial Service at the U.S. Mission to the EU, defines WEEE as a directive aimed at reducing the amount of electrical and electronic equipment waste in landfills. The document presented last month at an EU meeting in Brussels further defines a producer as any person who manufactures and sells electrical and electronic equipment under his own brand; resells under his own brand equipment produced by other suppliers; or imports or exports electrical and electronic equipment on a professional basis into a member state.
But at this late stage in the game, two core issues stand out when experts are asked about the large amount of member states missing this week’s deadline.
“The deadline when it was put in place appeared to be doable; however, there are several practicalities that just haven’t been able to be put in place in sufficient time in order to make this a reality for everyone. Part of that is because there’s just not the infrastructure in place,” Mary McDonald, a contract lead QMS and EMS auditor for the National Standards Authority of Ireland Inc. (NASI) and CEO of The McDonald Consulting Group, remarked. McDonald gave the example of a computer chip being branded by one company, shipped by another and sold under a major brand. In common cases like this, WEEE does not specify what company is responsible for what part of the recycling of the technology.
“If you look at what they are trying to put in place, it’s more complicated than it appears on the surface,” she said.
The second glaring issue is that the WEEE directive allows for flexibility from member state to member state, permitting each country to determine to what level WEEE is implemented, making this not one directive but 25 directives that must be registered for and complied with. Further complicating the process are countries like Spain, which requires companies to separately register with each of its 17 regions.
“A big part of the problem has been the type of legislation as defined by the EU treaty that this is, a 175 regulation, which basically establishes a set of lowest common denominator requirements that each nation must satisfy, but gives a great deal of latitude to each member state to be more stringent than the least standards would call for and also a great deal of latitude in the way they implement things and define things and so on,” Myles said. “This has been, in my estimation, the biggest source of confusion and chaos regarding this. It really, in my mind, goes against the idea of the EU from a trade perspective, which was to be a common market in the sense that the United States is a common market.”
Is This a Sign of What’s to Come with RoHS?
Is WEEE, cousin to RoHS, a sign of what the industry will face next year when its July 2006 deadline hits? No, according to Aidan Turnbull, head of WEEE, RoHS and eco-design at Environ Corp., a strategic risk management and technical consulting services firm based in the U.K.
“The WEEE directive is an environmental directive based on Article 175 of the Treaty of Rome 1957. It sets minimum standards which must be met, but other aspects of the directive can be varied at a member state level. That is why we have 25 variations on the WEEE directive. The RoHS directive is a single market directive based on Article 95 of the Treaty of Rome 1957. This directive must be applied equally in all member states -- no member state has the right to vary the implementation of the RoHS directive.”
Meanwhile, policing for companies that miss the various member state WEEE deadlines or that produce products not in-line with each nation’s requirements should be expected. Poland, for example, is preparing to levy fines up to the value of the product if it is found to be non-compliant.
But to what extent the policing is enforced is a different question. “In some cases it’s quite clear that some regulatory agencies do not have the people power or the monetary resources to stringently monitor what’s going on in the market place. In many cases that will be an issue of government budget sizes,” said The GoodBye Chain Group’s Myles.
“It’s unclear at this point and that is, of course, adding to the stress level for companies on this side of the Atlantic who want to at least make a reasonable stab at compliance. In very many cases, it’s just not clear what to do and, furthermore, it’s not clear where your priorities have to lie.”
Suggested Approach
So what should a company do to cover its bases? First, implement the EU WEEE marking standard -- a crossed out wheelie bin (or trash can, as we say here in the U.S.) -- indicate the date of manufacture and define who the producer is on the product itself.
Second, if not done already, get someone on top of the issue. Look into companies like The GoodBye Chain Group and Environ that manage this aspect of the supply chain, or look to partner with solid distributors like Premier Farnell (known as Newark InOne here in the U.S.) that have specific employees positioned to track the states and compliance situation.
Producers should also get cozy with European organizations that may be helpful in fulfilling requirements. The Commercial Service at the U.S. Mission to the EU suggests: RENE, Recycling Network Europe, a network of small- and mid-sized companies with experience in recycling; EARN, European Advanced Recycling Network, a collection of recyclers specializing in solutions and funding R&D; ERP, European Recycling Platforms, set up by large corporations to allow efficient recycling; and WEEE Forum, representatives of voluntary take-back systems.
Finally, suggested Myles, ascertain who the producer is within your own supply chain. “Establish with your distributors, resellers, retailers, etc., via your contracts to make it very clear who has the responsibility for the WEEE obligations, paying the WEEE fees, joining the collective in the various countries. Different companies will find it advantageous in one way or another to do this,” he said.
Unlike the directive and member states’ activities, he concluded, “It needs to be explicit so that no one is left flat footed.”
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