The Government is considering moving back UK target dates for compliance to the EU WEEE (waste) Directive.
According to the WEEE Directive, producers in member states must be recycling products discarded by consumers from August this year.
To allow industry to hit this deadline, the Government aimed to introduce legislation in August 2004.
It failed to do this, for reasons including protracted consultation with industry, and as yet there is no WEEE-related legislation in the UK.
“The WEEE Directive poses major practical challenges and we are concerned to get it right,” a DTI spokesman told Electronics Weekly. “Discussions with other major member states indicate they are grappling with the same issues.”
Last week, through its WEEE website, the DTI announced the August deadline has been moved to the “first quarter 2006”, and would not discuss further detail.
“At least this ends speculation,” Claire Snow, director of the Industry Council for Electronic Equipment Recycling (ICER) told Electronics Weekly at the time.
Within hours, the DTI removed the update to its website, bringing back to 13 August 2005 the date for “Producer responsibility for financing commences alongside retailer take-back”. In a statement to EW, regarding the change back to 13 August, the DTI said:
“We have now changed the web page to ensure that it does reflect the current position: the timing of the implementation of producer and retailer obligations remains this coming August, unless or until Ministers decide to defer this.”
The statement continued:
“This issue of timing was raised by many stakeholders in our last consultation. Many have argued for delay to implementation. Ministers are considering these views in taking their decisions on the implementation package over the next few weeks.”
With no legislation, according to ICER, recycling planning is stuck for want of some basic information and to complete a working complaint system will take time. “We have not yet seen what they [UK laws] are going to look like,” said Snow. “If we don’t know a few months before [the deadline], we are not going to have time.”
According to ICER’s Snow, companies want the Government to provide a national data clearing house (NHC) to tell them where items to be recycled are located. “It is feasible and it is what most of industry wants,” she said.
According to the DTI spokesman: “Ministerial consideration will include decisions on the NHC. The issues surrounding the NCH are particularly complex.
From Electronics Weekly