SMEs ignorant of WEEE

UK businesses remain in the dark over forthcoming legislation

SMEs are still not ready to cope with the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) legislation which comes into play on 1 July, new research from online VAR WStore has revealed.

Just under half of respondents to the survey admitted they were unaware of the packaging regulations and had never heard of the WEEE directive. Not surprisingly, 60 per cent of respondents were not implementing policies or procedures to cater for the new regulations.

Many UK businesses have assumed they will not be adversely affected by the regulations, and are not aware they may be faced with the cost of disposal of old IT and electrical equipment, said WStore.

Businesses will have to arrange, and pay, for their WEEE to be disposed of by an approved authorised treatment facility if the waste equipment was purchased before 13 August 2005, and is not being replaced with equivalent equipment. Similarly, businesses will have to pay for disposal if they can not trace the producer or their compliance scheme.

Stewart Hayward, WStore commercial director, said: “What these changes mean for anyone buying, or selling, IT equipment is that the costs of recovering and disposing of packaging materials and the equipment itself will be met by increased prices. Assuming that you don’t have to do anything, or the problem will be someone else’s responsibility simply isn’t good enough – as many smaller businesses may discover to their costs.”

Hayward continued: “Perhaps the most surprising finding of our survey has been that so many people haven’t even heard of the new regulations, in spite of the increasing amount of attention the issue of recycling has received in the press in recent years.”