After lengthy consultation the new WEEE Regulations, resulting from the transposition of the Recast WEEE Directive, have now been laid before Parliament and come into effect on 1st January 2014.
One of the key issues is the introduction of mandatory collection targets for compliance schemes and mechanisms to prevent the ‘trading’ of evidence of household WEEE collections between schemes, which producers claim was leading to a significant increase in the cost of compliance. Schemes that over collect will be required to finance the excess (or retain the income – depending upon the net value or cost of the recycled WEEE) , and under-collecting schemes will have to pay a ‘compliance fee’ per tonne of WEEE it has been unable to collect or obtain WEEE evidence from other schemes.
The regulations can be downloaded from here