In terms of its UK implementation, the European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive has endured a long, sometimes torturous, journey. The directive was enshrined into EU law way back in 2003, but it took years of consultation, amending, to-ing and
fro-ing before Britain finally set up a framework to deal with its domestic e-waste in 2007. That framework has proved to be a controversial one whose merits have divided producers, local authorities and industry bodies alike.
Some stakeholders have been vituperative in their criticism. “It’s almost Stalinesque,” complains Douglas Herbison, Chief Executive of AMDEA (Association of Manufacturers of Domestic Appliances). “It’s enormously complex and even many of us in the industry don’t understand it yet. I had hoped by now it would have settled down, but there’s still quite a lot of strife out there in terms of people complaining about the way it’s working and not working.”
In theory, it should be simple. From April 2007, producers of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) were required to join a producer compliance scheme (PCS). Some EU countries have just a handful of such schemes, but in the UK a free-for-all occurred with nearly 40 PCSs being set up. In 2007/08, over 4,000 producers registered with these organisations.
Producers are obliged by law to supply data on a quarterly basis detailing the different types of EEE that they place on the UK market. The figures are subsequently added up and calculated into a market share for each compliance scheme. Each PCS then has to buy back a proportionate amount of e-waste from local authorities in each of the five categories of WEEE. They are then given evidence notes to prove the WEEE has been correctly dealt with.
So far, so good. But inevitably it is almost impossible for a PCS to buy back its precise market share percentage. Problems occur when schemes collect too much WEEE over a given period, thus creating a shortage for other schemes, and a ready-made market in evidence notes.
The system was set up with the knowledge that some trading of notes would go on to restore parity between the schemes. The problem is that the market has thrown up drastic imbalances between the competing schemes, with some over-collecting well beyond their market share. The price of evidence notes has skyrocketed as a result. Just as in any market system, there have been winners and losers.
With a 50 per cent market share, REPIC is the largest PCS in the UK. It has also been one of those that have found it difficult to comply with the regulations. “What was supposed to be minor trading in evidence notes has turned to mass trading,” notes Chief Executive Dr Phil Morton. “You get schemes who say ‘I’ve got all the evidence I need but what the heck I’ll buy some more’. They know they can always sell it on for more.” At the end of the 2007 compliance period, REPIC was one of seven schemes unable to meet their targets and has asked for a judicial review of the whole process. “We were effectively being held to ransom by other compliance schemes that were asking for outrageous prices,” says Morton.
Morton also claims that the routes taken by WEEE are often not visible or auditable. “People are buying anonymous bits of paper and financing a system where WEEE is going down paths over which they have no influence or control. They could end up appearing in strange places that we really don’t want them to appear and would certainly never sanction them appearing in.”
A recent example of this occurred when a joint investigation between The Independent, Sky News and Greenpeace revealed a large amount of unusable e-waste was being exported to Lagos in Nigeria. “This is what they call ‘leakage’,” says Herbison. “We’ve all seen this. It’s mainly been things like TVs, computers and mobile phones, less so domestic appliances. It shouldn’t happen under the WEEE Directive, but, yes, there are examples where it is happening.”
Herbison attributes such ‘leakage’ problems to the disconnection between the local authorities that collect the WEEE and the producers and PCS schemes that are ultimately responsible for its disposal. “All the WEEE arrives in a designated collection facility, usually owned by the local authority,” he says. “But there’s no requirement for the local authority to actually hand it over or register it as WEEE. If they can get a price for it as scrap there is nothing technically to stop them doing that.”
Morton suggests that the UK government should give more control to the compliance schemes: “If you put the control into the hands of people who are financing it and whose brands are involved, you’d stop things like dumping overnight. It is supposed to be producer responsibility and in my experience if you give someone responsibility you have to give them authority and that isn’t what’s happening.”
It should be said that not every stakeholder is dissatisfied with the current system, however. Lisa Gore, Waste Strategy and Contracts Officer at Bath and North East Somerset, describes the council’s experience as being “very positive”.
“I know there are issues with the trading of evidence, but as a local authority that hasn’t affected us at all,” Gore explains. “Valpak has taken on our collections and we’ve had no issues with them as a PCS. We’ve been able to keep the same contractors and containers in place for the various WEEE streams at our sites, whilst no longer having to pick up the costs. From our point of view it’s worked well.”
Certainly, in terms of collection of WEEE, the system has got off to a good start. The initial target of collecting four kilogrammes (kg) of WEEE per annum per head of population has been easily surpassed. In the 2007/08 period, in fact, over 140,000 tonnes of WEEE were collected in the UK, equating to around 6.8kg per person. Duncan Simpson, Director of Marketing and Sales at Valpak, suggests that, glitches aside, the UK system has worked quite well so far. “I spoke at a European WEEE conference recently where a number of other countries talked about their experiences. They all complimented the UK for the total tonnage of WEEE that we’ve managed to recover in such a short space of time.
“Overall, considering how quickly it was set up, I think it has delivered a very good job in a very short space of time. Yes, there is the issue of imbalance of evidence between the different schemes and I think the government needs to settle that problem. They could do it through a simple arbitration process and not throw the baby out with the bathwater by bringing in draconian rules that will just kill the whole system.”
At present, the government is reviewing the system and will report back in the summer. All of the stakeholders we spoke to believed that, at most, the review will propose some gentle tinkering to the current UK system. This may be enough in the short-term, but looking further in the future, the EU is reviewing the entire WEEE Directive and has proposed that member countries hit a 65 per cent WEEE collection rate by 2016. The UK’s current rate is around 23 per cent. If Britain is going to get anywhere near that ambitious target, some sort of drastic rethink of the producer compliance system may eventually be forced upon us.