The Joint Trades Association, comprising a number of key trade bodies and their members affected by the WEEE Regulations, have formally stated their unanimous support for the use of ‘substantiated estimates’ to assist the UK in reaching the forthcoming WEEE collection targets. The development of ‘protocols’, as a mechanism for calculating activities that take place outside of the WEEE system, was first proposed to BIS by B2B Compliance back in 2011 and Project Director, David Burton, has expressed his appreciation at the announced support “It is widely accepted that about two thirds of collection activity related to WEEE or used EEE occurs outside of the regulated system and while much of it is bona fide it currently do not count towards the targets – our proposals to develop protocols to achieve a sufficiently robust count, without the excessive costs that would relate to trying to regulate extra-WEEE activities, have gained significant credence following the support of the Joint Trades Association”.