In accordance with the EU WEEE Directive, EU member states are required to transpose the WEEE Directive into their domestic laws. The UK government submitted its domestic WEEE legislation (SI 2006 No. 3289) to Parliament on December 12, 2006, and it came into effect on January 2, 2007..
Ahead of the fourth year that the UK WEEE regulations were to come into effect (January 1, 2010 – December 31, 2010), the UK government conducted an impact assessment of its domestic WEEE implementation and enforcement experience, and published a draft regulation for public consultation. The deadline for this public consultation was April 6, 2009.
The UK government recently published a consultation document entitled "The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations: Government consultation on new regulations and further development of the supporting infrastructure to take effect from the fourth compliance period (1 January – 31 December 2010 onwards) including impact assessment and draft regulations." The document includes the impact assessment report in Annex 1 and the draft regulation in Annex 2. The full document can be downloaded from the annex.
The purpose of this consultation document is to strengthen the UK's waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) system, including:
1. Improve the approval process for the "Producer Compliance Scheme";
2. Further improve the existing "Distributor Take-back Scheme";
3. Simplify data reporting requirements to reduce the administrative burden on businesses.
The draft amendment is expected to be submitted to Parliament for review this spring, and the new regulations will officially come into effect on January 1, 2010. The UK Department for Business, Enterprise and Reform (BERR) will also publish a new guidance outline for reference after the new regulations take effect.
– Reference source: BERR website
Other related files can be downloaded:file50000.pdf
