Overview#
WEEE governs what happens to electrical and electronic equipment once it is thrown away. It pushes the cost and the effort of collecting, recovering and recycling old equipment onto the producers who put it on the market, rather than onto the public purse.
Whoever sells the equipment is responsible for what becomes of it as waste. This is extended producer responsibility. Producers register, report what they place on the market, and fund the take-back and recycling of equivalent waste.
Which products fall under WEEE#
Since 15 August 2018 the directive applies, in the words of Article 2(1)(b), "to all EEE". That is open scope: anything meeting the definition of electrical and electronic equipment is in unless Article 2(3) or 2(4) names it as out. Every piece of EEE is then sorted into one of the six categories of Annex III, and the category decides which recovery target applies and how the equipment is reported.
Categories 4, 5 and 6 are decided by a tape measure. Ask whether any side is over 50 cm, then whether the device is IT or telecommunication equipment. Only categories 1 to 3 are decided by what the equipment does. Annex IV gives a non-exhaustive list of examples for each category, and the directive says in so many words that the list is not exhaustive.
What is excluded#
Article 2(3): equipment necessary for the security of Member States, including arms, munitions and war material for specifically military purposes; equipment specifically designed and installed as part of another type of equipment that is itself excluded or out of scope, and that works only as part of it; filament bulbs. Article 2(4), since 15 August 2018: equipment designed to be sent into space; large-scale stationary industrial tools; large-scale fixed installations, except equipment that is not specifically designed and installed as part of them; means of transport, except electric two-wheel vehicles that are not type-approved; non-road mobile machinery made available exclusively for professional use; equipment designed solely for research and development and made available only business-to-business; medical devices and in vitro diagnostic medical devices expected to be infective before end of life, and active implantable medical devices.
RoHS excludes professionally installed photovoltaic panels; WEEE does not, and Annex III lists equipment for the generation of electric currents. RoHS excludes large-scale fixed installations outright; WEEE keeps in scope any equipment in such an installation that was not purpose-designed for it. WEEE excludes filament bulbs and infective medical devices; RoHS has no such exclusions. WEEE has no pipe organ exclusion. Same definition of EEE, different edges.
Who counts as a producer#
The obligations fall on the "producer", and Article 3(1)(f) defines that role by how the equipment reaches the member state, not by who made it. Four situations make you a producer in a given country:
A producer established in one member state that sells into another may, under Article 17, appoint an authorised representative there to carry the obligations; a distance seller must. This is why a company selling across the EU ends up registered, directly or through a representative, in every country it ships to.
What a producer has to do#
Financing is split by the date of 13 August 2005. Waste from equipment placed on the market after that date is paid for by the producer of that equipment, individually or through a collective scheme. Waste from older equipment, which the directive calls historical waste, is treated differently by market: for household WEEE, Article 12(4) shares the cost among all producers on the market in proportion to their market share; for WEEE from business users, Article 13(1) puts it on the producer of the replacement product when one is supplied, and otherwise on the user. Photovoltaic panels use 13 August 2012 as their date, and the equipment that entered scope with open scope uses 15 August 2018.
The marking obligation#
The symbol most people associate with WEEE is required by Article 14(4). The directive itself says less about it than the folklore does.
The bar under the bin, the producer identifier and the date mark that many products carry are not in the directive. They come from EN 50419, the standard the directive names as the preferred way to mark, and from national law. The directive itself prescribes the symbol and the three adverbs.
Marking is only half of Article 14. Under Article 14(2) users of household equipment must also be told that WEEE is not to go into unsorted municipal waste and is to be collected separately, which return and collection systems are available to them, how they contribute to reuse and recycling, and what effect the hazardous substances in the equipment can have on health and the environment. Member states may require that information in the instructions for use, at the point of sale or through public campaigns.
The targets#
WEEE puts numbers on the whole system, from what is collected to what is recovered.
Article 7 sets the collection rate. Article 5 puts retailers into the collection system: a distributor supplying a new product must take back the equivalent old one free of charge, one for one, and retail shops with at least 400 m² of sales area for EEE must take back very small WEEE, no external dimension more than 25 cm, without any obligation to buy.
Annex V Part 3 sets the recovery and recycling targets that treatment has to hit, by category, since 15 August 2018:
| Annex III category | Recovered | Prepared for reuse and recycled |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Temperature exchange, 4 Large equipment | 85% | 80% |
| 2 Screens and monitors | 80% | 70% |
| 3 Lamps | 80% recycled | |
| 5 Small equipment, 6 Small IT | 75% | 55% |
Where it sits#
WEEE covers electrical and electronic equipment as RoHS does, with the differences in the edges described above. The two work as a pair. RoHS keeps hazardous substances out of equipment at the design stage, and WEEE handles that equipment responsibly at end of life. WEEE also operates within the wider framework of the Waste Framework Directive, which sets the general principles of EU waste law and defines the "waste" in the acronym. Batteries built into equipment have their own end-of-life regime under the Battery Regulation.
National laws transpose WEEE into each member state, for example the ElektroG in Germany, and the registers, the representatives and the penalties are national.