Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive

Important announcement
The WEEE Directive implementation date has been postponed until June 2006. For further information visit the link below.

We throw away a million tonnes of electrical and electronic waste every year in the United Kingdom.

Fridges, computers, tvs and mobile phones are creating an enormous amount of waste when they’re disposed of and we need to do something about it for the sake of our environment and our own health.

Electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) plays an ever-increasing role in our daily lives. We have now come to rely on our kitchen appliances, mobile phones and computers. These offer us many benefits but also some costs to the environment as we are throwing away more and more of this waste – in the UK the amount of electrical and electronic waste increases each year by an estimated 80,000 tonnes.

It’s a European-wide problem. Not enough Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) is being recycled. In response, the new WEEE Directive was published in January 2003. This seeks to improve the way we manage the WEEE we produce and helps to protect both human health and the environment. It sets targets for collecting WEEE, new standards for the treatment of WEEE and strict recycling and recovery targets to help minimise its disposal.

The Directive is one of a series of 'producer responsibility’ directives that makes producers responsible for their products from manufacture through to final disposal or recovery. It affects any business that manufactures, brands and imports EEE as well as businesses that sell EEE or store, treat or dismantle WEEE within the European Union. It will affect businesses that have WEEE to dispose of and will also affect members of the public who will have more opportunities to reuse, recycle and recover these products.

For more information please visit www.environment-agency.gov.uk