Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations

New regulations published on 6 July 2005 by Mr. Dick Roche, T.D., Minister for the Environment, Heritage, and Local Government clear the way for producer-funded recycling of waste electrical and electronic equipment in Ireland.

The WEEE Directive requires producers to be responsible for the financing of the collection, treatment, recovery and environmentally sound disposal of WEEE from 13 August 2005.  It means that final users of such household WEEE will be entitled to leave that waste back free of charge, either to retail outlets in instances where a replacement item is purchased, or other authorised collection points, including local authority civic amenity sites, from that date onwards.

What is WEEE?

Under the directive Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) is divided into ten Categories, a full list including examples is in the First Schedule of the regulations:

  1. Large Household appliances
  2. Small Household appliances
  3. IT and telecommunications equipment
  4. Consumer Equipment
  5. Lighting equipment
  6. Electrical and electronic tools (except large-scale stationary industrial tools)
  7. Toys, leisure and sports equipment
  8. Medical devices (except all implanted and infected products)
  9. Monitoring and control instruments
  10. Automatic dispensers

What is the WEEE Directive?

The WEEE directive is a piece of European Legislation which require member states to improve the way they manage our electrical and electronic waste and also to encourage manufacturers to develop more environmentally friendly products.  The Irish Government has implemented legislation to meet the requirements of the Directive.

What does the WEEE Directive entail?

August 13th 2005 consumers will be entitled to have their old electrical and electronic product that is a similar type or fulfilling the same function of the new item that is being purchased taken back and recycled, free of charge.  Producers will have to meet the costs of recovery.

Main Players

The main players in the WEEE directive are:

  • Producers
  • Retailers
  • Registration Body
  • Local Authorities
  • Collective Compliance Schemes
  • Consumers

A Producer is any person who manufactures and sells electrical and electronic equipment under his own brand, or resells equipment produced by other manufacturers under his own brand, or imports electrical and electrical equipment or wholesales equipment from an unregistered producer.

Registration Body

A registration body an independent Body, which will maintain a register of all producers, audit their ability to pay for future recycling, collect sales data from each producer and report annually to the Minister on all of these activities. Producers can now register with the national registration body for the purposes of compliance with the WEEE Regulations.

Collective Compliance Schemes

Two collective compliance schemes have been put in place to act on behalf of producers for the collection of WEEE from retailer’s premises.  The compliance scheme in the Limerick/Clare/Kerry region is European Recycling Platform and GEODIS are the Waste collection company working on their behalf.