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The WEEE Directive

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Directive 2002/96/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of January 27, 2003 on waste, electrical and electronic equipment (the “WEEE Directive”) imposes on producers and distributors “take-back” and recycling obligations.

In addition this includes obligations for information to users, treatment facilities and reporting to authorities.

The key aim of the WEEE Directive is to reduce WEEE disposal to landfill by:

  • Providing a free producer take-back scheme for consumers of end-of-life equipment
  • Improving product design with a view to both preventing WEEE and to increase its recover ability, reusability and/or recyclability
  • Achieving targets for recovery, reuse and recycling of different classes of WEEE
  • Providing for the establishment of collection facilities and a separate collection system of WEEE from private households
  •  Providing for the establishment and financing of systems for the recovery and treatment of WEEE, by producers including provisions for placing financial guarantees on new products placed on the market

Annex 1A in the directive gives the following scope for products that are subject to the WEEE Directive:

  • Large household appliances
  • Small household appliances
  • IT & Telecommunication equipment
  • Consumer equipment
  • Lighting equipment
  • Electrical and electronic tools, excluding large-scale stationary industrial tools
  • Toys, leisure, and sports equipment
  • Medical devices, excluding all implanted and infected products
  • Monitoring and control instruments
  • Automatic dispensers

The proposed new and revised WEEE (December 2008) had a key aim to increase the target of collection to 65% by weight of these product categories. It was also proposed to include medical devices.

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