WEEE Directive
What WEEE means to you
It is a startling statistic that each UK household owns, on average, 25 electrical or electronic appliances. This clearly leads to a mountain of waste and most of these appliances have ended up in landfill sites at the end of their lives.
It is this environmental disaster that the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Directive is designed to tackle.
Manufacturers and retailers bear the brunt of ensuring that all products placed on the market since August 2005 can be recovered and their component elements stripped down and recycled. However, contractors too have obligations under the WEEE Directive.
Clients and domestic consumers will have to pay their installers or local authorities to transport WEEE to a recycling centre. Contractors will have to include the cost of this transportation and stripping the WEEE from the building in their tenders i.e at the beginning of the equipment’s operational life. Installers will pay the producer’s costs by means of a fee, which is either stated or included in the purchase price of the equipment – this cost they can pass on to their customer as part of their overall charge.
Consumers are not legally obliged to recycle their WEEE, but they will be paying for it in up front charges.
Equipment covered by WEEE includes:
* Lighting
* IT and telecoms
* Monitoring and control instruments
* Household appliances – large and small
* Tools
The industry has not felt the full impact of the WEEE Directive yet, but it is now in force and the Government estimated that the cost to the UK would be over £2 billion. The increasing sophistication and high-tech nature of buildings means that the Directive will drive up the cost of construction and general m&e contracting.