As you will no doubt be aware, the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Regulations SI 2006/3289 were published in December 2006 and began to come into force on 2 January 2007. In conjunction with this, non-statutory Government Guidance Notes and a Code of Practice for the collection of WEEE from designated collection facilities have just been published, which aim to provide you with all the additional information you may need on these contentious provisions.
Copies of these documents can be downloaded from the DTI website.
Hot on the heels of this guidance; work is currently underway on the approval process for treatment facilities. Under the WEEE Regulations, producers of electronic equipment must fund the collection and recycling of end-of-life products from 1 July 2007. This recycling is to be carried out by accredited authorised treatment facilities (AATFs). It is the responsibility of the Environment Agency and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) to accredit these facilities, and they aim to have the forms ready for the approval process by mid-March 2007.
Bob Mead, WEEE Implementation Project Manager for the Agency, said, "With the AATFs it is an approval process, not a registration process. We are currently designing this process and the application form should be available soon. We will be receiving applications from 1 April 2007 with the aim of determining them by 1 July."
To help producer compliance schemes plan ahead, the Agency and SEPA will produce a list of the AATFs which have applied for approval.
